K-Electric Claims they Cannot Meet the City’s Power Demand

This is not the first time the metropolis is experiencing worst as well as long ‘load management’, especially when the temperature of the city is going to the extent of ‘heatwave’ as a warning has already been issued by the provincial government.

Currently, the power utility of the city is over 20 million, K-Electric claims that in this temperature the demand is raised to exceptional heights. The reality is that the officials of Karachi Electric are not able to find the exact increase in demand and due to this the severe shortfall of electricity is being witnessed in this hot weather all over the city, especially in suburban areas of the city.

This indicates that there is a high percentage of electricity loss in the city, which can be due to three reasons. The first can be poor and low-quality infrastructure as well as collusion of KE’s lower-tier employees. The other reason can be electric theft, which is ensured through the kunda system. The third reason can be a delay in the recovery of the dues from the consumers.

As per the sources, the demand for power this summer is in between 2,700 to 2,900 megawatt in Karachi. But as per the officials of K-Electric, the demand hiked to 3,300 MW significantly during the heat wave days.

This is the reason KE has announced that they will continue the scheduled outages throughout the city as they are not able to cater to the city’s recent demand for power.

In some areas, the locals are facing three to four phases of outage for nearly 1.5 hours to 2 hours. The areas where the demand for electricity is too high, the outages reported exceeds 12 hours a day.

Despite certain claims by K-Electric every year of improvement of disbursement system of electricity, every time in summers, the frequency of breakdowns keeps on rising.