KARACHI: The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has reduced the power generation to save fuel, the company sources told Pakistan Today on Sunday.
They said that the hours’ long loadshedding in Karachi is artificial, as the KESC is economising on the furnace oil consumption while relying more on the power supply from WAPDA. All the power generating units of KESC were being run on Thursday and Friday last, when the city was exempted from any loadshedding but soon after the Ashura-e-Muharram, three units of the company having generating capacity of around 180 megawatts each, were shut down, sources claimed.
They said even the unit which had been shut for maintenance a month ago was operational now, yet the company shut it down on Saturday.
“Two out of six units at Bin Qasim Power Plant were running on furnace oil while the rest on natural gas on the said two days of Muharram to avoid the outages, but after that the KESC has resorted to unannounced power breakdowns by shutting down the units running on oil, they added.
Such tactics were an eye-opener for the high-ups in both the Ministry of Water and Power and Pakistan Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA).
“The management of the company is only interested to get the supply of gas and electricity from Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and WAPDA respectively without any payment,” they alleged adding that the company owed billions of rupees to both the utilities.They said the KESC, which is always at odds with the SSGC for low gas supply could meet the city’s demand as it has its dual fuel units. They said the company’s units included BQPP, KTPS, rental power generators, IPPs’ power generators at Korangi, Anud, Industries and Kannup having the capacity to generate around 1200 MW, 200 MW, 50 MW, 250 MW, 65 MW, 14 MW, 8 MW and 80 MW respectively making the total capacity of the available electricity to 1864 MW.
“The available capacity is more than the existing demand of the city which is currently around 1400MW to 1600 MW,” the sources noted.
