Pakistan’s energy minister says a major technical flaw in the country’s power generation and distribution system caused a major power outage that plunged the country into darkness overnight.
ISLAMABAD – A major technical flaw in Pakistan’s power generation and distribution system caused a major power outage that plunged the country into darkness overnight, said the energy minister.
Hours after the crash late Saturday, Energy Minister Omar Ayub said on Twitter that power was being restored in phases, starting with Islamabad. He said on Sunday that power had been restored in much of the country.
The blackout was initially reported on social media by residents of large urban centers, including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Multan. The minister and his spokesman then accessed Twitter to update the country.
Ayub urged people to be patient. He said the cause of the power outage is being investigated and that a fire is being started at Pakistan’s main Tarbela plant in the northwest, which would lead to phased restoration of power in the rest of the country.
Ayub said at a news conference on Sunday that the Guddu plant in the southern province of Sindh developed a fault at 11:41 pm that caused other plants to shut down in seconds.
Later, Zafar Yab, a spokesman for the Ministry of Energy, said that the Tarbela and Warsak plants, both in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, were back up and power was being restored to the transmission system.
Yab said that restoring energy in all areas of the country will take some time, however.
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Associated Press writer Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
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