Latest highlight: Hydel generation drop behind latest load-shedding

Ministry says lack of water discharge from Tarbela, Mangla dams leads to low generation.

ISLAMABAD:

Mentioning the latest highlight in a series of power crisis episodes, the Ministry of Water and Power said on Tuesday that a drop in hydel power generation has led to forced load-shedding.

“Lack of water discharge from both Tarbela and Mangla led to a drop of hydel generation between 800-1200MW during the past one week — out of the total hydel capacity of 7,100 MW,” power ministry said in a statement issued here.

“At present, total power generation has touched 11,000 MW against a demand of 14,700MW, registering a shortfall of 3,700MW,” a source in the power ministry said.



According to the ministry, the discharge from Tarbela and Mangla is going to increase from April 21 as per the demand of the provinces and the load management will be back to the planned schedule of six hours in urban and eight hours in rural areas.

Ministry of Water and Power has issued special directions to distribution companies and the National Power Control Center (NPCC) to optimally manage the increase in demand and supply gap of electricity due to low hydel generation.

The biggest single factor behind the latest bout of load-shedding was the low indent of water from the provinces which did not require much irrigation water after heavy rains during the past few month.

Another big contributor was the failure of two units, of 300MWs each, at the Hubco plant, which created a large generation vacuum. These units have now been fixed.

Industrial feeders will remain at eight hours of load-shedding as per the schedule for summers. The industry, after several years, remained at zero load-shedding for four of the past six months.

The high-loss feeders – the number of which is not more than 15-20% – where there are issues of theft or non-payment of bills will have to bear increased load shedding.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 15^th,  2015.

Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.