Gradual restoration underway as massive power breakdown hits the country

Monitoring Desk

After around a two-hour nation-wide massive power outage, electricity supply was gradually restored, with the Capital Islamabad the first city to be back on line.

Minister for Energy Omer Ayub said three units of Tarbella were back to work, along with those at Warsak and gradually all powerhouses and grid stations would be put on line.

Omer Ayub also shared his picture on Twitter from the National Power Control Centre to supervise the restoration operation.

In a tweet, he said the power supply for most of the areas under the IESCO has been restored.

A massive power breakdown hit the country Saturday night, with the Ministry of Energy blaming it on a sudden drop in frequency that tripped the entire system.

A spokesman of the Ministry said the initial fault occurred at Guddu power station at 2341 hrs, dropping the frequency to zero. It tripped within a second, causing a cascading effect and all power houses tripped, one after the other.

Minister of Power Omer Ayub Khan in a tweet said all emergency teams were operational and trying to restore the system. He said efforts were afoot to find out the cause of frequency drop that triggered the tripping of the nationwide power transmission system.

The National Transmission and Dispatch Centre said efforts were afoot to first put Tarbella power house back on line.

Omer Ayub said he was personally supervising the restoration operation from the National Power Control Central (NPCC). Without specifying a time limit, he said it would take some time before the entire generation system was back on line.

Ministry of Power asked the people not to be misled by any rumors, as it was a technical issue, that was being addressed. The spokesman hoped that the system would be back on line soon.

The power breakdown was an immediate sensation on social media, with people attributing it to an alien and cyber attack.

Twitter users were also quick to report the cities and towns that were hit by the outage Almost all major cities seemed to be without any power.

Courtesy: APP News