Power Minister Khurram Dastgir said on Monday that the government was hoping to restore electricity in the country by 10 p.m.
“The target is to restore power by 22:00 (10 p.m.) local time, but we’re aiming for much sooner,” the minister told Reuters.
Large portions of the nation, including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, and Quetta, are currently without electricity due to a nationwide power outage that was caused by a “frequency difference” in the national grid early this morning.
Soon after the power breakdown was reported, Dastgir, while talking to Geo News, said that the power generation units are temporarily shut down in the winter at night as an economic measure to save fuel costs.
The systems were turned on at 7:30 a.m. this morning, one by one, frequency variation was reported in the southern part of the country between Jamshoro and Dadu. There was a fluctuation in voltage, and power generating units were shut down one by one due to cascading impacts. “This is not a major crisis,” said the federal minister as the country plunged into darkness for the second time in four months.