Karachi (Web Desk) A major power breakdown has hit Karachi and other cities of the country as an Extra High Tension (EHT) line tripped and affected the power supply.
According to Ministry of Energy the breakdown took place due to to an“accidental fault“ in the transmission system.
The ministry said that southern parts of the country, mainly Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan, were left without power after a fault was detected in the national grid’s southern transmission system.
“Due to an accidental fault in the country’s southern transmission system, multiple southern power plants are tripping which is affecting the transmission of electricity in the southern part of the country,” tweeted the ministry.
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Later, addressing a press conference in Islamabad Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan shared the preliminary findings of the circumstances that led to the breakdown.
He said that hopefully electricity would be fully restored “to normalcy” by tonight and announced that power had begun returning to parts of southern Punjab.
So far, the minister explained, 5,000MW out of 8,000MW have been restored.
“Power has been fully restored in Multan and Faislabad, while the restoration is ongoing in areas of Karachi, Quetta and Hyderabad,” he maintained.
The minister said that the restoration process will take time but guaranteed that the electricity will return to normalcy throughout the country by tonight.
Dastgir maintained that the inquiry team has been given four days to submit a report regarding details of the cause of the blackout.
“The outage began at 9:16am and Karachi’s electrical system was isolated by 9:35am,” he added.
The minister explained that by “isolate”, he meant that the “1,000MW that we provide to Karachi daily, was cut”. However, he stated that K-Electric’s system was independently operational and was supplying electricity to parts of the metropolis.
The northern part of the country was “kept safe” from the blackout due to the country’s quick response, he said.
