A nationwide power outage across Pakistan early on Monday has left large parts of the country in the dark, with authorities claiming that complete restoration could take anywhere from 5 to 27 hours.
In a statement issued after the power outage struck all of Pakistan around 7:34 a.m., the Ministry of Energy said the national grid went down and triggered a “widespread breakdown.” It added that “maintenance work is progressing rapidly.” A few hours later, the ministry said that power had been restored in “some” areas of federal capital Islamabad and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa capital Peshawar, while work was underway for the rest of the country.
It is still unclear how long the outage would last, with estimates ranging from 5-27 hours. According to local media, complete restoration could take 27 hours, while Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir-Khan told Geo News he was aiming to finish the maintenance work within 12 hours. Some ministry officials, however, maintain that power would be restored in all major cities within 5 hours, with outlying areas to be facilitated subsequently.
“In winter, the demand for electricity reduces nationwide, hence, as an economic measure, we temporarily close down our power generation systems at night,” Dastgir-Khan told Geo, adding that when the systems were turned back on this morning, “frequency variation and voltage fluctuation was observed” in Sindh, triggering a national shutdown.
This is not the first time Pakistan’s long-stuttering transmission system has suffered mass breakdowns. In October 2022, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Quetta, Multan and Faisalabad witnessed a 12-hour breakdown after nearly 8,000MW of power went offline. Prior to that, in January 2021, the entire nation was plunged into darkness for several hours due to a problem in the frequency of the power transmission system.