Page 6 - AsiaElec Week 05 2023

AsiaElec POWER AsiaElec

Pakistan’s power woes continue

Prime Minister apologies to nation as government and hospitals turn to generators

PAKISTAN DISRUPTED economic activity across Paki- before dawn the following morning led to
stan has once again demonstrated the vulner- the system crashing.
WHAT: abilities of an ageing power grid employed by “Today, at 5:15 in the morning, power was
Ongoing power cuts the South Asian nation. fully restored,” Minister Dastgir said a day
bringing nation to its Blackouts that began in rural Balochistan later on Tuesday, January 24.
knees and Sindh provinces on January 23 swept The minister then blamed technical issues
across the south of the country, even with and even the possibility of hackers attacking
WHY: services now slowly being restored, continue Pakistan’s national grid as being behind the
Power saving efforts go to affect the population centres of Lahore and initial nationwide cuts.
wrong Karachi. In the days since, little has been seen in
At one time last week, domestic media terms of promises of reform in the power
WHAT NEXT: indicated that over half of the nation’s 230mn sector, or assurances that power grids will be
Infrastructure updates residents were temporarily without water better maintained pending reform, much to
needed supplies as a result, and in hospitals and the disdain of the general populace.
government offices, the little power that Power outages are not unusual in Pakistan,
was being delivered came from back-up with the most recent blackouts being the second
generators. time these have occurred in the last four months.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif tweeted Even in areas near Karachi, site of the
to the population, saying: “I would like to recently installed Karachi Nuclear Power
express my sincere regrets for the incon- Plant as powered by a pair of Chinese Hua-
venience our citizens suffered due to power long One pressurised water reactors (PWRs),
outage yesterday. On my orders, an inquiry is blackouts saw much of the nation’s largest
underway to determine reasons of the power city of 16mn grind to a halt.
failure. Responsibility will be fixed.” Nuclear power currently generates around
Little has been heard of Sharif since, 8-9% of all electricity consumed in Pakistan,
although a hastily arranged press conference with a little over 60% coming from fossil
after the prime minister released his com- fuels, primarily gas and coal.
ments on social media saw Energy Minister Hydropower meanwhile contributes a fur- I would like
Khurram Dastgir stepping up to defend the ther 27% of all power generated.
government’s efforts to restore power in areas Reports from the country now indicate to express
that witnessed a total collapse a week earlier. that last year Pakistan had an installed elec-
No mention was made, however, of his tricity capacity of 41.56 GW against an esti- my sincere
own ministry implementing energy-saving mated nationwide demand of around 31 GW.
means that saw electricity supplies cut during Distribution capacities fell short, though, regrets for the
low use periods on Sunday evening, January highlighting the issues with the grid, reach- inconvenience
22 in a bid to conserve fuel supplies. ing just 22 GW; a 9-GW deficit compared to
Subsequent attempts to reboot the grid demand. ™ our citizens
suffered.

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 05 02 •February•2023