Pakistan restores power after massive 24-hour blackout

Multan, Jan. 24. Pakistani authorities on Tuesday restored power supply after a massive blackout of almost 24 hours caused by a cut in the network, which left much of its territory in the dark, although residents of several cities reported still not having power in their homes.

"All 1,112 grid stations were restored within 24 hours across the country," the Ministry of Energy said on Twitter, confirming the restoration of power supply, which began to reach Islamabad late yesterday afternoon, and reached the rest of the cities throughout the night.

Despite the ministry's announcement, numerous users responded to the notification by pointing out that they still did not have electricity in their homes, while the energy company in charge of supply in Karachi, the country's most populous city, echoed.

"Electricity has been restored to important facilities, including airports, hospitals, water pumping stations, etc. At this moment, all power grids are operational and the restoration process is also continuing at the regional level," Imran Rana, spokesman for K-Electric, said on Twitter.

However, Rana added that they were carrying out "limited temporary load management in the city to keep the system stable," which could result in some places still not fully recovering supply.

Similar maintenance work is being carried out in another major affected city, Lahore, whose power company reported further frequency errors this morning.

The massive blackout began early Monday after frequency variations and voltage fluctuations in the southern province of Sindh caused power generating units to shut down one by one across the country, ministry spokesman Sohail Atiq said yesterday.

Pakistan is going through a severe economic crisis that led the government to recently approve a new energy conservation plan to reduce consumption, which includes measures such as the early closure of markets and shopping malls, or limiting the purchase of certain products with low energy efficiency.

Some experts estimate that this country of 220 million people consumes about 29,000 MW of power at its summer peak and about 12,000 MW at the time of peak demand in winter.

Pakistan has suffered several similar massive blackouts in recent years, the most considerable of them in May 2018, when a technical problem caused several power plants to go offline and affected some 130 million people.EFE

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