Lahore Suffers Blackout As Dense Fog Envelops the City
Winters always bring dense fog in the province of Punjab, and this time, the the fog has caused four power plants to trip. As a result, Lahore faced a four-hour long blackout on Wednesday.
National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC), the 500 kV Guddu-Rahim Yar Khan, the 500 kV Guddu-Guddu and 500 kV Balloki-New Lahore cct1&2 tripped because of the extreme weather conditions and fog. This had a domino effect , causing several power plants, including Guddu Power Plant (740MW), Kel Power (124MW), Baloki Power Plant (1,200 MW), Nishat Power (185MW) and Nishat Chunian Power (195MW). As such, the national grid suffered a power loss of around 2,444MW.
The Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) network was also affected, with almost 20 lines of 132kv getting tripped. Officials said that the electricity was partially restored by 12 noon. By evening, the Baloki power plant was restored to its full generation capacity.
In comparison with the previous blackouts during the times of the old government, this power outage was tackled rather quickly. The officials also added that the fog causes tripping of the transmission lines and power plants. The scope of this power outage was limited to Lahore and its suburds, and lasted for only a few hours.
“Only load-shedding hours were increased due to this incident. However, by evening, the entire generation was back”, said officials.