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Hello Subscriber
Last week Pakistan faced a countrywide blackout and left 200 million people without power supply. Also, telecommunication and internet have been affected. “A countrywide blackout has been caused by a sudden plunge in the frequency in the power transmission system” (Energy Minister Omar Ayub Khan via Twitter)
The power grid failed after high transmission lines tripped, causing the frequency in the distribution system to drop within one minute from 50 Hz to zero.
It happened on Saturday, Jan.9, short before midnight, and it took several hours to recover the grid section-wise.
The energy minister said at a news conference that the blackout had initially been set off by an engineering fault at the Guddu Thermal Power Plant in Sindh Province, which then pushed much of the country’s power grid into an automatic shutdown.
He said the actual cause of the problem at Guddu was still being investigated, and that repair work was proceeding slowly because of bad weather conditions.
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The term "engineering fault" is can mean anything, especially under the aspect that the country has chronic problems with its transmission system, and major power breakdowns are frequent.
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One day earlier the European power supply grid was very close to a blackout. Also here the frequency dropped to 49.745 Hz. Austrian Power Grid claimed as cause a massive power fail in Romania, home of the vampires. Since they are usually sleeping during daytime we can exclude this factor. The investigations are ongoing.
During the fail duration (about one hour) the European interconnections have been split in regions. Germany avoided a blackout due to heavy support from power generation companies in the Czech Republic as several supportive power plants have been permanently shoot down due to the idea of transition to renewable energy.
France lowered the voltage by 5% for the first time in the last 60 years and asked to switch off electrical appliances like heaters at home.
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For the Pakistan case I assume poor grid maintenance, but It seems that the power grid stability is more influenced by renewable energy than politicians have realized.
Due to the European incident the German government came up with the idea to disconnect the car charging stations from power supply when the frequency is dropping below 50 Hz. This is a very good idea to increase the sales of EV cars.
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By my humbled opinion it's only the step one. Step two will be that all EV car batteries are used for peak load shaving.
Latest then there will be an additional demand for four quadrant meters and net metering. Also an autonomous meter disconnection on low frequency will gain more importance, as it supports the grid stability without remote connection.
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Thank you for your interest, have a happy day and stay safe,
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Reinhard Günther
and the CLOUGLOBAL Team
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