The government planned to reduce load-shedding from eight to 10 hours to six hours a day by producing an additional 1,172MW. PHOTO: FILE
The federal government is planning to reduce load-shedding hours this summer and run all its power plants at full capacity by making payments to fuel and power suppliers.
In lockstep fashion it will also endeavour to add 1,172 megawatt to the national grid through two new gas-based plants.
Sources told The Express Tribune that the government planned to reduce load-shedding from eight to 10 hours to six hours a day by producing an additional 1,172MW.
Two new power plants will be installed this month – of 742MW at Guddu power plant and 425MW at Uch-2 power plant, they said.
As a consequence, a senior government official said, the installed capacity of power plants in the country will jump up to 22,172MW from the existing 21,000MW. The country’s maximum power generation could now cross to 17,000MW against the existing 16,000MW.
The official said Guddu and Uch-2 power plants were gas-based plants and therefore they would be generating at least 1000MW power at cheaper rates. “The Uch-2 plant is already generating 300MW power at its testing stage and this is why the situation of power supply has improved,” he added.
He said the government would make capacity payments to the power producers so that they could operate plants to generate maximum power in a bid to keep load-shedding at six hours a day.
“We will make capacity payments to the power producers from subsidy allocated by the government,” he said, adding that the government would also continue making payments to fuel supplier, Pakistan State Oil (PSO), to ensure uninterrupted fuel supply.
“We will make payments to fuel suppliers from the revenue of power distribution companies,” the official added.
At the same time, another official raised the prospect of a severe power crisis despite all these measures. According to him, hydropower generation would fall from 6,000MW to 1,000MW due to reduction in water flows from Tarbela and Mangla dams.
“The situation would not be different from the previous year when Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was in power,” officials said.
Though independent Power Producers (IPPs) have enhanced power generation by 1,700MW after clearing the circular debt it was piling up again and there is a possibility that IPPs would also drop generation to avoid the circular debt.
He said the government had also allocated Rs280 billion subsidies for the current financial year 2013-14 and Rs 170 billion subsidy had been consumed so far.
“The government will have to operate those power plants –shutdown due to non availability of gas – on costly fuels such as High Speed Diesel (HSD), leading to hike in power tariff,” official said.
So, if the government runs these plants on the HSD, the volume of subsidy would exceed and therefore government would prefer to keep these plants shut. The government had already raised power tariff for consumers, he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 19th, 2014.
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We don't have an energy crisis we have a non-payment, theft and incompetence crisis!!