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According to media reports, following a huge blackout due to a power distribution system accident, several cities and towns across Pakistan plunged into darkness late on Saturday night.
A power outage was reported almost simultaneously in many towns shortly before midnight. The blackout was experienced by residents of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Islamabad, Multan, and others, the reports said.
Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Hamza Shafqaat tweeted that the lines of the National Transmission Despatch Company had fallen, causing an outage. “It will start taking somewhere again before everything gets back to normal,” he added.
Power Minister Omar Ayub Khan confirmed that the frequency suddenly dropped from 50 to zero in the power system network, causing the blackout. Ayub said, “We’re attempting to make a decision what affected the frequency drop,”
Initial reports indicate that at 11.41 pm there was a fault at the Guddu power plant in the province of Sindh, the Energy Ministry tweeted.
The fault triggered the high transmission lines, resulting in the system frequency dropping in less than a second from 50 to zero, causing, according to the ministry, power plants to shut down.
It added that Khan was at the National Power Control Center overseeing the restoration work.
The minister called on individuals to maintain restraint and said power restoration was being conducted with caution and teams were on the ground.
Later, Khan posted a series of tweets on multi-grid power restoration.
