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Major breakdown of electricity in different areas of Pakistan

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FCDySrAXsAASOiI
 
It definitely is not, but from what I hear from batch mates working in power companies, no one still has a clue why the fault occured. They bring a plant online and it trips again.

Expect it to take more time than the 10 PM ka nara by our energy minister.
@PanzerKiel (on the question of Cyber)

Power grids are very temperamental.
I know because, lets just say I know a "small" bit on Industrial / SCADA and cyber world.

The issue here is poor management.

Grid are often notorious because they are never designed from day one as a planned build-out. Grids grow organically hence are often stitched together as distribution gets larger.

In order to manage a grid operation sub-parts of the grid must run in load balance. This means that when some parts of the grid do not receive enough electricity they trip. And if poorly designed this contagion spreads and you can have a cascading event of tripping. BTW this sort of stuff even happens in highly developed economies.

In our case we poorly managed this process.

With winter months, hydel generation is down. Also I think some repair work or enhancement is being done so we had our hydel power low. You combine that with low winter demand, many IPPs and other units were shuttered seasonally. Perhaps more than they should have. This likely resulted in the initial outage, and we have a cascading tripping of grids nationally.

Now the challenge comes with how to bring it back up. Usually grids require a very methodical and linear approach to activation. And from what I am hearing is that as they try and bring the grids up they keeping tripping and have been unable to trace why. This can be a result of a number of issues. And yes Cyber could be at play here as well and cannot be discounted. You'll hear them use use the term "frequency". All electricity is distributed at a certain frequency. Misalignment can cause system to go into an auto-safe process. Also system will auto tune the frequency based upon load requirements. So in the case of mis-synchronized process to active the grid you can find yourself in a situation where different units will generate at slightly differing frequencies, and the power distribution control systems will trip in order to save the downstream infrastructure.
My sense is this is where we are stuck.

So power grid design, poor power management, caused a national outage. And then low power generation coupled with misalignment and weak skills and tools is making the task of bringing the system back online difficult.
Within all of this Cyber is possible and could be a variable nuisance that is making the task of bringing the grid back online difficult. Regardless this experience exemplifies the overall degradation of every institution within Pakistan.
 

That tweet is enough to make my blood crawl.

Any decent minister should right now be apologizing and not taking plaudits.

Bijli jana Shehbaz Sharif aur PDM ki ghalti nhn, but restoration is. Shahbaz Sharif jaisay khud betha control room main phase match kar raha hai.

Ullu kay pathay.
 
@PanzerKiel (on the question of Cyber)

Power grids are very temperamental.
I know because, lets just say I know a "small" bit on Industrial / SCADA and cyber world.

The issue here is poor management.

Grid are often notorious because they are never designed from day one as a planned build-out. Grids grow organically hence are often stitched together as distribution gets larger.

In order to manage a grid operation sub-parts of the grid must run in load balance. This means that when some parts of the grid do not receive enough electricity they trip. And if poorly designed this contagion spreads and you can have a cascading event of tripping. BTW this sort of stuff even happens in highly developed economies.

In our case we poorly managed this process.

With winter months, hydel generation is down. Also I think some repair work or enhancement is being done so we had our hydel power low. You combine that with low winter demand, many IPPs and other units were shuttered seasonally. Perhaps more than they should have. This likely resulted in the initial outage, and we have a cascading tripping of grids nationally.

Now the challenge comes with how to bring it back up. Usually grids require a very methodical and linear approach to activation. And from what I am hearing is that as they try and bring the grids up they keeping tripping and have been unable to trace why. This can be a result of a number of issues. And yes Cyber could be at play here as well and cannot be discounted. You'll hear them use use the term "frequency". All electricity is distributed at a certain frequency. Misalignment can cause system to go into an auto-safe process. Also system will auto tune the frequency based upon load requirements. So in the case of mis-synchronized process to active the grid you can find yourself in a situation where different units will generate at slightly differing frequencies, and the power distribution control systems will trip in order to save the downstream infrastructure.
My sense is this is where we are stuck.

So power grid design, poor power management, caused a national outage. And then low power generation coupled with misalignment and weak skills and tools is making the task of bringing the system back online difficult.
Within all of this Cyber is possible and could be a variable nuisance that is making the task of bringing the grid back online difficult. Regardless this experience exemplifies the overall degradation of every institution within Pakistan.
It is hard to restore a nationwide grid after collapse. Large grids are inherently unstable. It is like a symphony orchestra. One wrong note from one instrument destroys the concert.
 
This grid failure is getting noticed.
 
Every member of the PDM and those who support them should be hanged publicly.
 
I kept thinking the entire day, if the power is taken out, most of the defense systems would be neutralized without wasting ammo.
 
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