Massive power blackout on 14 August 20003 experienc e in North America and Ontario, Canada became a wake-up call to energy policy maker for energy security in the future. The blackout has brought quite an impact to the pub lic, economic, communication, healthcare and power generation. The blackout estim ated to affect 50 million people with 61,800 megawatts electric loss. The loss of el ectrical supply also causing public insecurity due to fear of 11 September tragedy to r epeat again. There also few lesson can be learned from the incident involving the poli cy for energy security, technology development and maintenance. Thus, this paper will give a review on the 2003 blackout event and the chronology of the incident, the impact and lesson learned from the incident.

The standard of living is continuously improving in all climatic areas of the world causing higher energy demands especially in buildin g sector. The numerous cooling techniques that are being used are very energy inte nsive and also causing environmental hazards due to hydro chlorofluorocarb ons (HCFCs) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Therefore there is need to look for more energy efficient, cheaper, and environmental friendly cooling technol ogies such as evaporative cooling.The current study is focused on performance analysis of various configurations of evaporative cooling including direct evaporative cooling, indirect and falling film. Initially, a detailed mathematical model of these c onfigurations is developed and then MATLAB code is developed for performance analysis u nder various operating conditions like air temperature and humidity. In vi ew of performance dependence of these configurations on climatic conditions, compre hensive transient simulations are performed in five climatic zones of Pakistan includ ing Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, Multan and Karachi considering their six month cool ing duration data from April to September. The performance parameters considered ar e cooling capacity and outlet temperatures.The results obtained established that direct systems perform best in dry and hot weathers of Multan and Lahore even providin g 2-3ºC more temperature reductions than falling film and indirect evaporati ve cooling systems and provide maximum cooling capacity of 2.4kW. Indirect system performs well in Islamabad and Peshawar providing 3-3.5ºC more reductions than dir ect and falling film configurations. Maximum cooling capacity of 2.29kW is required to meet the same outlet conditions, while falling film performs best than the other two configurations in all climates including humid climate of Karachi. Ma ximum temperature reduction of 26.1ºC is achieved in Lahore during the month of Ju ne. Maximum cooling capacity of 2.01kW is obtained to achieve outlet temperature eq ual to wet bulb.