Justifying outages: Power firms undertake ‘fake’ feeder maintenance programme
“Power firms have intentionally shut down 20% feeders on the pretext of maintenance to justify load-shedding,” a source said, arguing maintenance of “feeders takes place in monsoon and has never happened in December.”
According to sources, the move came after Water and Power Secretary Nargis Sethi asked heads of power distribution companies to cut outages to two hours a day or face action.
Power shortage is going to aggravate following the closure of canals from December 21 that reduces hydropower generation. Already, production from this cheap source has come down from the normal 6,500 megawatts to 2,200MW because of reduction in water releases from dams.
This is expected to fall further to 1,000MW after closure of canals. On Wednesday, power shortfall surged from 3,000 to 5,000MW.
According to a senior government official, during day time power generation was in the range of 8,000 to 8,500MW and at night time from 9,000 to 9,500MW. Demand stood at 12,000MW, which rose to 13,000MW at peak time.
“Domestic consumers are facing 11 to 12 hours of outages a day, textile industry is enduring 8 to 15 hours of outages and cement industry 8 to 10 hours of load-shedding due to the fake feeder maintenance programme,” the official said.
As if the sharp decline in hydropower production was not enough, thermal power plants having capacity of 3,600MW were also shut down for lack of fuel supply.
The four most-efficient power plants including Saif, Halmore, Orient and Sapphire with combined generation capacity of over 800MW have either been shut down or running on diesel that costs a high Rs19 per unit.
“Circular debt has caused shortage of fuel for power plants,” the official said, adding the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) needed to recover Rs425 billion from consumers compared to payables of Rs417 billion.
However, the water and power ministry is planning to run all thermal plants at full capacity to make up for the shortfall in hydropower production. For this purpose, it needs uninterrupted gas supply but the petroleum ministry stands in its way.
Earlier in a summary sent to the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet, the water and power ministry had called for implementing a new gas allocation policy that gave priority to the power sector after residential consumers. However, the petroleum secretary said they had no gas to give to power companies in the face of acute shortages in winter.
“The prime minister has decided in the new gas allocation policy that the power sector will be given second priority (after residences), therefore, diversion of gas from power plants is against the policy,” commented a power ministry official.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 20th, 2012.
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