Pakistan’s national grid suffered a major breakdown on Monday, the power ministry said, leaving millions of people without electricity for the second time in three months and highlighting the infrastructural weakness of this heavily indebted nation.
Power Minister Khurrum Dastagir told Reuters the outage was caused by a large voltage surge in the south of the grid, which affected the entire network.
He insisted this was “not a major crisis” and power would be back soon.
Pakistan often suffers from power cuts, which are blamed on mismanagement and a lack of investment in infrastructure.
In a statement. the energy ministry said that at about 07:30 local time (02:30 GMT) the grid “experienced a loss of frequency, that caused a major breakdown”, adding that “swift work” was taking place to revive the system.
Some grids in the country had already been restored and power would be fully restored in 12 hours, Mr Dastagir told Geo TV.
He said that parts of the electricity were turned off overnight because the demand for energy during winter was less than in summer, when much of the country experiences very high temperatures and people use air conditioning and fans.
“In winter, the demand for electricity reduces nationwide, hence, as an economic measure, we temporarily close down our power generation systems at night,” he said.
When they were turned on in the morning, “frequency variation and voltage fluctuation” were observed in southern Pakistan “somewhere between Dadu and Jamshoro” and subsequently “power generating units shut down one by one”, he told the TV channel.
It means that across the country, traffic lights are down, fans have stopped and lights are off.