‘Govt exploiting all resources for power generation’

PATOKI: The government is working to exploit all indigenous resources negating the impression that it is only focusing on thermal power generation, said Federal Minister for Water and Power, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf.

Addressing the inauguration ceremony of an Independent Power Project (IPP) of Oriented Power Limited at had Baloki on Saturday, he said power tariff of this plant would come to around Rs5.5 per kilowatt hour (kwh), which would be the cheapest in the system, other than hydel, and would help offset some of the higher generation costs.

He said the project had started supplying power to the national grid at regular intervals in December 2009. However, he added that he was told that its technical commissioning, after passing all the required tests, had started on May 24. He said that more than 900 megawatts of new rental power projects and IPPs had been added to the system, adding another 800MW of IPPs will be coming on-stream within the next three months, followed by yet another 600MW of IPPs in the last quarter of this year.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18th, 2010.