PHOTO: REUTERS
ISLAMABAD: With little time left in its five-year tenure, the federal government has directed power distribution companies to remove all constraints by the end of March in order to do away with load-shedding in areas covered by low-loss feeders across the country.
The directive came in a special meeting with chief executive officers of all distribution companies, their technical staff, officials of Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) and other officials concerned at the Power Division on Thursday.
In response to the power minister’s directive, all distribution companies have established Constraint Removal War Rooms while Pepco has set up a special monitoring cell, headed by the general manager/chief engineer, to execute the plan by the end of March for ensuring zero load-shedding on feeders having 0-10% losses.
It was suggested that the distribution companies should equip the Constraint Removal War Rooms with CCTV cameras connected with the centralised monitoring system via communication link of the Power Information Technology Company for continued monitoring by the power minister.
Pepco and the distribution companies have already conducted technical surveys of the existing distribution network and have identified points of constraints on 132-kilovolt, 66kv and 11kv transformers.
In an attempt to remove these constraints before the onset of summer in 2018, all the distribution companies are dedicating their resources and energies to achieve the target by the end of March.
Pepco’s monitoring cell will submit its report after every 10 days about the actions taken by the distribution companies. Power Division Minister Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari will supervise and oversee the execution of timelines.
He will also visit different constraint points to have first-hand knowledge and take action as per performance of the distribution company concerned. In the meeting, Leghari emphasised that after meeting the demand and supply gap, it was important for the government that consumers got electricity without any interruption during the upcoming summer season.
He also asked the distribution companies to end load-shedding in more consumer areas based on the percentage of losses as the system had surplus power.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 19th, 2018.
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