Load shedding woes: ‘As temperatures soar, so does demand for power’

State minister says electricity demand has risen to 18,500 megawatts against a supply of 14,000 megawatts

FAISALABAD:

“Providing uninterrupted power to consumers during sehar, iftar and taraweeh is a priority of the government. Steps are being taken to reduce load shedding hours,” said State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali on Saturday.

He was talking to newsmen after visiting a complaint centre of Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (FESCO) at sehri.

The state minister said that distribution companies had been directed to not shed load during sehar and iftar,

He said strict action would be taken against SDOs and XENs if these directions were ignored.

He said heads of distribution companies had been instructed to replace faulty transformers immediately.

The minister said under the load management schedule, there would be six hours load shedding in urban areas and eight hours load shedding in rural areas.

He said industrial feeders would face load shedding for eight hours. He said industries supplied from mixed feeders would face six hours load shedding.

“It is unfortunate that consumers have suffered an increase in load shedding hours over the last few days,” he said. “Demand for power spiked to 18,500 megawatts whereas the supply was 14,000 megawatts. We have now succeeded in producing 16,000 megawatts. Hopefully, this will help ease the problems being faced by consumers.”

“Demand for electricity rose as temperatures soared,” he said. “I urge citizens to cooperate with the government. We are trying our best to manage this situation.”

He said a number of special teams had been constituted to work round-the-clock in three shifts to monitor implementation of the load management schedule.

He said the federal secretary of the Ministry of Water and Power would receive daily reports through teleconferences.  Earlier, the state minister visited the FESCO Distribution Control Centre and Central Complaint Cell.

FESCO Chief Executive Rasheed Aslam, Operations General Manager Akhtar Randhawa, Operations Chief Engineer Muhammad Anwar, Chief Commercial Officer Haroon Rasheed, Chief Engineer Nizam Din Marwat were also present.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2015.