Restoration of the electricity supply has been started in different areas of the country after a suspension of more than 11 to 12 hours on Monday.

According to the 24News HD TV channel, around 1300 feeders linked to the National Grid System across the country were tripped on Monday morning at 7:34 am.

Federal Power Minister Khurram Dastagir said the restoration of electricity supply in different parts of the country including Islamabad has been started.

Power at 300 grid stations of electricity distribution companies was restored whereas work on the restoration of electricity at 812 grid stations is in process.

Electricity was restored at 26 grid stations of Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) whereas restoration at 94 grid stations of Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO) was completed.

In Gujranwala, 10 grid stations were restored, 20 grid stations of Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO), seven grid stations of Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (FESCO), 14 in Multan, 12 in Hyderabad under HESCO were restored.

Restoration of 67 grid stations in Sukkur and 19 in Balochistan has been started. 17 500KV grid stations of National Transmission and Despatch Company were restored whereas 16 grid stations of power plants were restored.

Generation of Electricity has been started from Tarbela, Mangla and Warsak dams. Power generation from thermal power plants will be initiated soon whereas generation of electricity from coal-fired power plants will take 15 more hours

https://twitter.com/kdastgirkhan/status/1617538388034486272?cxt=HHwWgIDU1YCm0_IsAAAA

The sources said the power authorities have decided to fully restore the electricity supply in Lahore city after 14 hours. While the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) has electrified the two circuits of Lahore city including Band Road and New Kot Lakhpat.

Both circuits will provide power to 132 kV grid stations of the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO). The power authorities have also hinted at an unannounced load shedding of electricity in Lahore during the restoration of the power supply in the city.

Wapda Town, Gulshan Rav8i, Shalimar, and Ghazi Road circuits will get electricity soon from the NTDC. 

The LESCO sources said it will take another three to four hours to partially restore power in Lahore city and electricity will be restored to hospitals first and then will be provided to domestic consumers while the industrial sector will be completely shut down for the time being.

Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (FESCO) has also started restoration of power in the district after a 14-hour long suspension as power is restored from Gutti Grid station.

The FESCO officials said that the electricity will be restored fully for the city from other stations in different phases.

The Sindh Electric Power Company (SEPCO) Spokesperson Asad Mughal confirmed that out of 445 tripped feeders of the company, 95 feeders out have been restored by an alternative method in Sukkur after 11 hours long suspension.

The SEPCO spokesperson also said that the restoration work is also going on at other affected feeders.

The channel report said the electricity supply from the national grid system was restored in Kashmore city and its surrounding areas after 11 hours as at 7:30 in the morning, there was a power breakdown across the country including Kashmore.

It is also reported that power has been restored in the Larkana district of Sindh after twelve hours.

The channel report also said that the electricity supply was fully restored after 11 hours in some areas of Balochistan including the entire Dera Bugti district and Sui areas.

As per the channel report, the power has also been restored in the district Mach of Balochistan after twelve hours of the suspension.

The SEPCO officials said the electricity supply has been fully restored in Tangwani's area of Karampur and its surroundings.
The power was restored in Ghotki, Deyharki, Obaro, Mirpur Mathilo, and Thal and adjacent areas. 

Restoration of electricity supply in GEPCO's grid stations has also been started after 13 hour-long suspensions as the power was restored to Gujranwala division including Gujranwala city, Kamonke, Kala Shah Kaku, Mureedke, and other areas.

The channel report said the power is restored in the Lahore district's area of Shahdara too.

Earlier today, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif took notice of the countrywide power breakdown and ordered a high-level inquiry to ascertain the reasons of the massive outage disrupting routine life and business.

The prime minister constituted a high-level committee to investigate the power breakdown and sought a report from Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir on the causes led to the major electricity crisis in the country. He also asked him to pinpoint the officials who had showed negligence. 

Ordering immediate restoration of power supply, Shehbaz Sharif said such incidents would not be tolerated. 

Power Minister Khurrum Dastagir told newsmen that the outage was caused by a large voltage surge in the south of the national grid, which affected the entire network. 

Supplies were being partially restored from north to the south, the minister said nearly six hours after factories, hospitals and schools reported outages.

The minister said the grid should be fully functioning by 10pm. "We are trying our utmost to achieve restoration before that," he added.

Earlier, a massive electricity breakdown caused by a fault in the national grid hit the country Monday morning disrupting life in all major cities including Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta.

Sources said transmission lines of Tarbela and Mangla dams were tripped and all power plants in Guddu, Jamshoro, Muzaffargarh, Haveli Bahadur Shah and Balloki shut down. The NPC fuse was also switched off to save the system.

The power supply went off suddenly at 7:32 am with IESCO, LESCO, MEPCO, SEPCO, QESCO and K-Electric were the most affected. 

A number of cities in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Punjab were without power supply.

As many as 22 districts of Balochistan were without electricity and supply was suspended to 117 grid stations of IESCO.

According to QESCO officials, both electricity power transmission lines coming from Guddu to Quetta have been tripped impacting 22 districts including Quetta, Khuzdar, Sibbi and Dera Murad Jamali.

Karachi, the economic hub of the country, also knocked out of the grid because of the NTDC system collapse

Sources said National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC) and power distribution companies have launched efforts to restore the power supply which may take 27 hours.

Local outages are common across Pakistan, and the national power system is a complex and delicate web where problems can quickly cascade.

In a couple of tweets, the Ministry of Power said the system frequency of the national grid went down at 7:34 this morning, causing a widespread breakdown in the power system. System maintenance work is progressing rapidly.”

https://twitter.com/MoWP15/status/1617368399621017601

In another post, the ministry said the restoration of power supply from Warsak to grid stations has been started and in the last one hour limited number of grids of Islamabad Supply Company and Peshawar Supply Company have been restored.

https://twitter.com/MoWP15/status/1617369744952430593

The NTDC’s attempt to restore the power supply across the country hit the snag due to the low power generation at the moment. All NTDC’s attempts so far have not yielded any result as the system was tripping again and again due to imbalance between generation and demand.

As for now 6,000 megawatts of electricity is being generated and the balance in system will be achieved after the generation hits the 8,000MW mark.

Internet, banking services disrupted badly

The power breakdown has brutally disrupted the daily life activities in several cities.

In Rawalpindi, mobile phone service and 4G internet system have started to err. 

The citizens were appalled as their online businesses and banking transactions are also badly affected.

The country has faced such power breakdowns several times in the past and the recent one showed that the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) had failed to put in place permanent remedial measures to overcome such incidents.

The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has recently imposed a fine of Rs20 million on the NTDC because of breakdowns and collapsing of its towers.

A similar kind of power breakdown had plunged the whole of Pakistan into darkness on October 13, 2022 when a disruption occurred in two 500kV transmission lines in Karachi.

Before that a major power blackout was occurred on January 9, 2021 which had plunged much of Pakistan into darkness.
In 2015 an alleged militant attack on a key power supply line plunged around 80% of the country into darkness for more than nine hours.

Reporters: Awias Kiyani, Irshad Qureshi and Esa Tareen