12-hour daily outages to continue

The duration of power outages touched 12 hours in Lahore on Wednesday.

LAHORE: The duration of power outages touched 12 hours on Wednesday. The situation would continue for the next few days in Ramazan due to multiple problems in generation plants, Pepco officials told The Express Tribune.

In Lahore, the electricity was out for 12 hours during Tuesday night. The power was closed for three hours consecutively in many areas like Wapda Town, Johar Town, Faisal Town, Gulberg, Model Town and Garden Town. The demand for electricity is stable at 14,800MW while the supply has decreased from 15,000MW to 11,300MW. Even though the demand in the last few days dropped because of good weather, the supply simultaneously dropped even further due to closure of eight plants of Kot Addu which produce 900MW of electricity.

There are 14 plants in Kot Addu but due to inaccessibility of oil because of floods, six plants which run on fuel have been closed down.  A Pepco official said people should get ready to face outages during Ramazan as there is a slim chance of improvement and their company is not ready to run plants in flood-hit areas because it is risky.

Pepco public relations director general Shafqat Jalil said different power plants had been closed due to floods.

The closures have resulted in a shortfall of more than 3,300MW.

“Lal Pir and Pak Gen produce 700MW and both have been closed while Kund Kot and Qadirpur were closed due to gas suspension,” Jalil said. He added that this is because the Pakistan State Oil stopped its supply of oil to Lal Pir because of non-payment.

However, Lal Pir could not pay because Pepco owned them money.

Meanwhile Kund Kot and Qadirpur could not receive gas instalments from their usual supplier, Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd because their gas compressors had stopped working. Jalil assured that Pepco is working on the problems and hopes to get 600MW from some plants. He denied any damage to the installations.

“I assure you Kot Addu in Muzaffargarh is perfectly safe and is ready to produce electricity in few hours but we are not taking the risk,” he explained. Jalil also ensured that relief would be given to domestic users by closing down industrial units at iftar and sehar.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 12^th, 2010.