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pargofan t1_j5jf9rf wrote

What's causing the power outage?

And 220 million is a LOT of people. That's nearly two-thirds of the US population

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UnusedCandidate t1_j5jfyjg wrote

Voltage fluctuations from what I read. Also, the energy sector in Pakistan is deep in debt. This has prevented upgrades to the system. So maybe that. Old systems

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pargofan t1_j5jj1jx wrote

95% of the country at once? Wow.

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UnusedCandidate t1_j5l1pid wrote

Did some digging. As per some forum posts, apparently power stations are turned off at night to conserve fuel and reduce loads. When the restart was attempted on Monday morning, the grid failed.

Another theory is that the load was too high on a local grid(Quetta, Balochistan), causing it to trip and sort of domino effect the entire national grid from there.

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Can't confirm either one in any meaningful way though.

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pargofan t1_j5l2dty wrote

Thanks for looking into it. Sounds temporary but amazing how it affected so many at once.

As an American, it's unreal to think of 220 million people suddenly losing electricity all at once.

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UnusedCandidate t1_j5l3dud wrote

Seems fairly common. There's a tight Forex squeeze, Pakistan has no fuel resources of its own. It all culminates to this. There's also a third theory that a Chinese made grid control system failed, leading to this.

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FormidableFloof t1_j5m0da4 wrote

Why would they do that? It's not like I don't know they are sabotaging the world on many levels, but still, what would be the motive?

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Amorougen t1_j5mnq96 wrote

How many people in the US lost power in 2003? Answer: 50 million. Can't remember duration, but some sites claim more than a day. Seems to me it was more than that in the Detroit area. I know the auto industry shut down, and cellular towers went dark. Good old POTS telephones worked though - powered off batteries (big batteries and lots of them). No comparison to what is happening to Pakistan however.

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50-Minute-Wait t1_j5karni wrote

China is also threatening to fuck with the power over non-payment to its plants.

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noxx1234567 t1_j5k2dww wrote

The elite in Pakistan steal all the funds meant for maintenance /upkeep of the transmission system

Ex military , politicians who run transmission organisations steal as much as possible and send it to London , usa or Dubai

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The_Mr_Kay t1_j5korxo wrote

Sounds like the same shit here in South Africa

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boomerinvest t1_j5lqyw4 wrote

And here in America.

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Codspear t1_j5m155a wrote

Don’t be so melodramatic. The US has one of the most stable energy grids on the planet and has nowhere near the top-to-bottom corruption of Pakistan or South Africa.

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AmeriToast t1_j5m4o7i wrote

Come on man, don't ruin their chance to crap on the US to feel better about themselves

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boomerinvest t1_j5m46pf wrote

I was referring to the corruption duh! I’m all too familiar with our grid and the interconnections. Follow the thread man. Stop trying to sound so superior.

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lfcman24 t1_j5l4614 wrote

Probably not enough fuel in generators. The grid is usually designed to sustain loss of few generators but if the demand power vs supplied power comes dangerously close even worst if the demand power is higher than supply, it can cause voltage to dip which causes generators to run at a higher speed and hence can trip those and results in a cascading effect where the demand cannot be met now by remaining ones and one by one all generators trip.

Coal Generators can take a day to two during warm start , gas ones are quick so depends what’s in their bucket. Power restoration after a grid failure can take a day to a week to complete restoration.

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Drak_is_Right t1_j5pfd5o wrote

It also takes time to sync each additional generator with the previous ones on the grid. There is a very fine window on the frequency. Just a tiny dip and everything goes down. Or explodes and catches fire.

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lfcman24 t1_j5pgtv3 wrote

Syncing is usually not that hard. The problem is that you create tiny islands when restoring after blackout and count how much reserve you have if your largest contingency/generator trips in this case. Worst case if you pick too much load after power restoration and suddenly the largest generator trips, you are back to zero. Therefore, companies design their power restoration as small pockets, helps bring all generators online and also helps supporting different island. Synchronizing islands is a bitch but with moderns AVR and frequency regulators they are pretty doable.

Load restoration is a like a total gamble because it’s all done theoretically but rarely any engineers have seen it happen in reality.

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