WHILE people are already braving worst gas crisis in winter season, a total power breakdown that plunged the entire country into darkness late Saturday night only further bewildered the masses. This also led to irresponsible rumour mongering on social media with some suggesting that terrorists have attacked transmission lines. In this backdrop, Minister for Power Omar Ayub Khan did well to timely explain that the outage has been caused by a technical fault in the lines of National Transmission Despatch Company (NTDC).
The concerned Minister and definitely technical teams deserve appreciation for immediately responding to the crisis, which led to phase wise restoration of electricity in different cities. Technical fault in the system may occur in any country yet fact of the matter is that our transmission system is still being run on obsolete mechanism. The country today has excess electricity due to power projects executed with the cooperation of China over the last seven or eights years. However the regrettable part is that no attention was paid to upgrade transmission and distribution system when new megawatts were being added to the system. There are also NEPRA reports that indicate subpar transmission system and recent break down has once again necessitated identifying NTDC system constraints and bottlenecks.
The Company must move forward on fast track basis to address them urgently in order to avoid recurrence of such massive outages. Already several projects in this regard are being executed which needs to be completed within given timeframe. The NTDC should be laced with ICT infrastructure as per latest international practices. The capacity of Discos should be enhanced by installation of new transformers to cope with increased power load. This will also help improve system stability and voltage profile. A reliable and improved transmission and distribution network is a must to ensure uninterrupted power supply to consumers and it must be part of our energy sector reforms. Upgrading the system will also address issue of line losses and help check power pilferage.
