Power sector survives major debacle

The power sector yesterday saved itself from a major debacle following sudden shutdown of two major power plants, as operators succeeded in restarting the plants within a few hours.

The country was officially having 580 megawatts (MW) of load shedding yesterday. If these two plants had not resumed operation, the load shedding would have reached 1150MW.

Power Development Board sources said around 11:00am yesterday the 360MW AES Haripur and the 210MW Ghorashal unit 3 power plants tripped abruptly.

"The Ghorashal unit had some problems with its cooling units. We are not yet sure what went wrong with the 360MW Haripur plant. But both of them resumed operation around 3:00pm," said a PDB source.

Yesterday the country's power plants had the generation capacity of 3340MW against an official demand projection of 3920MW.