Consumers face 15 hours power outages

Power company’s official washes hands of the matter.

Shahram Haq May 25, 2011

LAHORE:

Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) consumers are continuing to face up to 15 hours of load-shedding, even after an increase in the supply of furnace oil to the power producers.

The Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) shortfall is currently at 2,420 MW, but was touching around 6,000 MW last week. Pepco was previously receiving 12,000 metric tons of furnace oil; the figure has now improved and reached 21,000 metric tons.

The Lesco shortfall was 945 MW previously and is now at 840 MW, but still different areas of Lahore are facing 8 to 10 hours of load-shedding. The residential areas adjacent to commercial markets are worst hit.

Unscheduled load-shedding is another dilemma faced by the consumers.

In defence, the Lesco spokesperson said that the unscheduled load-shedding is not in their control as in this case the feeders are shut directly by the Regional Control Centre. This, he said, has been done to overcome the automatic shutdown of grid stations, otherwise bringing the grid station back online takes a long time.

He said that the situation will get better from June 22 due to an increase in water reserves in the reservoirs of Tarbela, which will help to generate hydropower.

Some feeders were closed due to routine maintenance work, he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2011.

COMMENTS (1)

Fed Up Karachiwallah | 12 years ago | Reply 'consumers-face-15-hours-power-outages' There is a fallacy in the column's title. The people facing 15 hours of power outages, cannot be called consumers. They can't consume melted ice creams, lukewarm water, press clothes, watch TV, surf the web etc. Maybe we should call ourselves 'SUBSUMERS', because the incompetency of the state to provide electricity, causes us to subsume the very basic motions of early 19th century civilisation.

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