Pakistan's national grid suffered a major breakdown on Monday, leaving millions of people without electricity for the second time in three months.
Citing Pakistani Power Minister Khurrum Dastagir Khan, Reuters reports that the outage was caused by a large voltage surge in the south of the grid, which affected the entire network.
Deutsch Welle (DW) reported that more than 220 million people in Pakistan were plunged into darkness after a major breakdown in the national grid caused a massive power outage in the early hours of Monday.
The nationwide power outage, which occurred at 7:34 am local time (0234 UTC/GMT), reportedly lasted for hours and impacted schools, hospitals and industrial units.
The International News says a major power breakdown hit the country at around 7:30am leaving major cities including Karachi and Lahore without electricity due to a fault in transmission lines.
Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Quetta and other major urban centers of the country were without electricity.
The Ministry of Energy said the work is underway on a fast track to restore the system. The ministry also claimed that electricity was restored in multiple grid stations of the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO) and Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO).
According to Quetta Electric Supply Company (QESCO), the two transmission lines from Guddu to Quetta tripped. It added that 22 districts of Baluchistan, including Quetta, are without power.
Meanwhile, a power outage was also reported in multiple areas of Karachi.
The IESCO spokesperson said that its 117 gird stations were without electricity. Meanwhile, PESCO also confirmed an outage in areas where it supplies electricity.
The International News says power supply across Pakistan will be fully restored by 10 pm.
Media reports say this is the second time within four months that the country was hit by a major power breakdown. Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Quetta, Multan, and Faisalabad were hit by a power outage last year in October.
The country's generation and distribution network has reportedly suffered eight major power breakdowns during the last nine years.
In 2014 and 2017, nationwide blackouts were caused by a fault in Tarbela Power Station while fog, frequency variation and the Guddu Power Plant fault were blamed for breakdowns in 2015, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
