ISLAMABAD: Despite increased hydropower generation yesterday, loadshedding throughout Pakistan surged to 12 hours as demand peaked to about 16,800MW amid complaints of inequitable shortage sharing.
A National Power Control Centre official said that there was a gap of 4,600MW as generation stood at 12,200MW against a demand of 16,800MW.
With this gap, the average loadshedding based on equitable sharing should have been less than 10 hours, but some feeders were drawing higher than allocated quota causing increased loadshedding, said the official.
He said hydropower generation had increased after the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) decided to raise discharges from Tarbela dam to 115,000 cusec from 90,000 cusec on Friday and from 25,000 cusec to 42,000 cusec from Mangla dam. Irsa also directed Wapda to open the fifth tunnel of Tarbela power house in order to further improve generation.
He said there were also reports of forced closure of some feeders because of system constraints. He explained that the system for computed demand could not be relied upon because it was not based on some scientific analysis.
For example, loadshedding was carried out for about 12 hours yesterday which meant there was 50 percent shortfall. But if 12,200MW was being supplied for 12 hours, the actual numbers did not add up because then the demand should be about 24,000MW which was not the case.
Another official said some feeders in Islamabad that provide electricity to federal and parliamentary lodges as well as the MPA hostels in the four provinces were facing loadshedding for five to six hours compared to 11-12 hours in other areas.
National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) Managing Director Zargham Eshaq Khan, however, put the shortfall at about 4,000MW yesterday morning and claimed that the same had dropped to 3,300MW in the peak evening hours because of improved generation from hydropower projects.
He said that hydropower plants were generating 5,000MW in the evening as peak generation had improved to 12,700MW. He said the power generation had improved on Saturday and as a result about 10 hours of equitable load management was carried out throughout the country but some plants were closed down later.
He said two power houses of Muzaffargarh thermal power station were closed because of technical reasons on Saturday but one of them had now been restored. “We have to keep on fighting with the old system,” he said.
In the private sector, only 400MW capacity Liberty Power and Hubco Narowal were non-operational. In the public sector, only one of the Guddu power plants was functional while Jamshoro station was getting only 1,000 tonnes of furnace oil against its requirement of 3,000. As a result, it was producing only 160MW even though it could generate 650MW with sufficient fuel supplies. Internews
