Pakistan’s power crisis worsened on Saturday as the shortfall exceeded 4,600 megawatts – according to sources – and unannounced outages spiralled to 20 hours in certain areas of the country.
While unannounced load shedding in suburbs of the country has gone up to 18 hours a day, villages are going as many as 20 hours without power. For rural areas, PEPCO has announced a load shedding schedule of four to six hours a day, but outages every day add up to eight or 10 hours.
The sources said 9,000 megawatts of power were being generated against a demand of 13,600 megawatts – translating into a deficit of 4,600 megawatts.
According to figures released by PEPCO on Saturday, hydel power generation stands at 1,462 megawatts and thermal power generation at 2,525 megawatts, while independent power producers (IPP) are contributing 5,235 megawatts to the total production. PEPCO’s latest export to KESC amounted to 690 megawatts.
Meanwhile, PEPCO spokesman Muhammad Khalid told Daily Times that 360 megawatts from three IPP units would be “added to the national grid tonight (Saturday)”.
He said the situation was likely to “improve in June, because melting glaciers would raise the level of water in Mangla Dam.
“We will add 640 megawatts of power to the national grid by March 31 from IPPs ... there are no other sources available for power generation.”
However, PEPCO sources said the supply-demand gap could rise further because of a shortage of water in reservoirs, and “it will affect power consumers more severely in June”.
The power shortfall, in turn, has sparked a potable water crisis in rural areas across the country, especially Sindh and South Punjab.
Water and Power Ministry sources told Daily Times that hydel power generation had gone down by 5,000 megawatts. The ministry is finding it hard to cope with the crisis, with most oil and gas fired power stations already operating at optimum levels. Currently, hydel power generation stands at 1,462 megawatts.
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