While city's temperature has crossed 40 centigrade, various areas are being subjected to hours-long load-shedding by the K-Electric that has made worse the routine life of Karachiites. The power utility said the peak demand touched 2,600 MW now and the company is currently receiving gas supply at nearly 90mmcfd as opposed to ECC allocated 276mmcfd and below the supply levels as compared to last year. It said for that reason, 500MW gas-fired plants are currently not operational that create an additional shortfall in the system.
KE spokesman said shortfall is expected to increase as demand increases. Due to this additional shortfall, customers in residential and commercial areas will experience a temporary outage of one hour whereas industrial customers will experience outage spells of four hours on average. The load management cycles are being taken on a rotational basis. Efforts to communicate timings to individual customers via our customer service and digital platforms are underway and we request your support and patience during this process, the spokesman said.
The key priority at the moment is to make all possible efforts to manage load without burdening customers while also ensuring all available generation is maximized including bringing online ahead of schedule one of our smaller FO-fired units at BQPS which was under planned maintenance.
"We are in contact with SSGC on the matter. The supply situation is expected to return to normal as soon as gas supply is elevated to last year's corresponding levels," he said, adding that K-Electric "sincerely regrets the inconvenience caused and requests customer's cooperation during this time."