KARACHI, Oct 22 (Focus Pakistan) - A HUBCO transformer fault has knocked a 660-megawatt generating unit offline at the China Power Hub coal plant in Balochistan. The breakdown comes five years after the same unit suffered a transformer failure that kept it out of service for 176 days and led to a $65 million insurance claim. Hub Power Company Ltd disclosed the latest outage to the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Oct. 21.
The outage takes half of the 1,320MW plant’s capacity out of service. HUBCO’s notice to the exchange on Oct 21 gave no restart date, no cost estimate and no cause for the fault.
China Power Hub Generation Company (CPHGC), a joint venture between HUBCO and China Power International, owns the imported-coal plant in the Hub-Gadani area of Lasbela district. HUBCO holds a 47.5% stake.
The silence matters because of what happened last time.
On July 14, 2021, strong winds and a thunderstorm tripped the plant, and the Unit 1 transformer failed, HUBCO told analysts at the time. As a precaution, the company also pulled Unit 2 offline for integrity testing. Unit 1 did not return to service until Jan 6, 2022, a gap of 176 days.
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That breakdown cost real money. HUBCO booked a Rs1.99 billion impairment against the destroyed transformer in its 2022 annual report, and insurers later accepted a combined $65 million claim covering property damage and business interruption, according to company documents.
The payout eventually flowed back into earnings. HUBCO told analysts in February 2023 that recognising the insurance claim for the July 2021-January 2022 outage had lifted its share of profit from CPHGC.
HUBCO transformer fault: same unit, new questions
Five years on, the same unit has failed again. HUBCO has not clarified which transformer or electrical component suffered the fault, or whether it has any connection to the 2021 breakdown.
That leaves investors with more questions than answers. Last time, the company needed almost six months to get a new transformer in place and the unit back on the grid. HUBCO has not said whether it holds a spare this time, or whether insurers have received a fresh claim.
Extended outages can affect capacity-related revenue under power purchase agreements, depending on the plant’s contractual availability requirements. HUBCO has not quantified any potential financial impact.
How much the outage hurts electricity supply depends on how heavily the system operator dispatches the plant. The notice offers no detail on that either.
A plant that matters more now
The China Power Hub plant carries more weight for HUBCO than it once did. Under a negotiated settlement with the government, the contracts for HUBCO’s original 1,292MW Hub plant expired early on Oct 1, 2024, instead of in March 2027. The company has since started dismantling that oil-fired facility, Nukta reported.
That leaves CPHGC as a major remaining generation investment at Hub. It also puts Unit 1’s reliability record under a sharper spotlight.
None of the disclosures so far points to negligence, defective equipment or poor maintenance. But the questions investors raised in 2021 about condition monitoring, warranties and insurance cover have now returned.
The last transformer failure kept Unit 1 offline for 176 days and produced a $65 million insurance claim. Five years later, the same unit faces another breakdown. This time, HUBCO has offered investors no timetable for its return.
