People in Pakistan’s Punjab brave prolonged power outages

Islamabad [Pakistan], June 26 (ANI): People in Pakistan’s Punjab are compelled to brave prolonged outages in the sweltering summer. This comes due to a sudden increase in electricity demand amid heatwave-like conditions which has damaged a huge number of transformers, Dawn reported.

Dawn is a Pakistani English-language newspaper.

The massive damage to transformers due to an overloaded power transmission and distribution system caused a huge financial loss to several power distribution companies (Discos), especially the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco), in Punjab, according to official sources.

A senior energy ministry official, who did not want to be named told Dawn that recently, a very tough situation was faced in terms of equipment.

“During this period, the system overloaded due to a sudden increase in demand, which once climbed to 30,000 megawatts in peak hours (mainly) because of an increase in the use of air conditioners, causing damage to a huge number of transformers (100kV, 200kV, etc.) across the country,” he said, as per Dawn.

Though he could not give an exact figure, he said the number of transformers damaged due to overloaded system was “massive”.

Lesco Board of Directors Chairman Hafiz Mian Nauman said that 200 transformers had to be replaced within five hours after several transformers developed faults due to increasing demand.

“Our [Lahore’s] demand, which was 4,000MW last year, has now reached 6,000MW,” he told reporters at a press conference.

The sudden rise in power consumption due to a change in weather caused a shortfall of over 6,000MW, as a couple of days earlier the demand in the peak hours hit 30,000MW, as per Dawn.