NTDC board apprised how system collapsed in May power breakdowns
Three major power breakdowns in May have forced the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) to carry out a highly technical study to propose further islanding options both in the Northern and Southern transmission systems.
The core objective behind this exercise is to boost the system protection and avoid incidents of tripping, triggering supply failures in north of the country. To this end, a consultant of international repute will be hired.
The study would have recommendations related to dividing north and southern systems in maximum seven independent clusters so as to avoid cascading effect of such breakdowns.
The decision was made in a meeting of the NTDC`s board of directors presided over by Babar Iqbal at WAPDA House on a single-point agenda to ascertain the facts regarding partial power failure as well as the way forward.The board was firm commitment to revamp and revitalize the transmission system of the country and instructed the management to fully investigate, analyze and determine the causes of the failure and for adopting mitigating measures to avoid such system collapse in the future.
NTDC management presented a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the incident, specifically the key system limitations of contingency. The board was apprised that the two 500 kilo volt transmission lines tripped due to fault at Guddu Power House switchyard triggering the third line`s breakdown as it could not sustain the load of the other two. As a result, the system was split in two regions North and South. The under frequency relays installed in the northern system isolated around 2,800 megawatts power load to stabilize the system.In the meantime, loss of additional generation in the North lead to collapse of the system and there was no further capacity available in the system to isolate an equivalent load.
