PEPCO announces 6 to 12 hours of outages

LAHORE – The summer has not set in but once again PEPCO has failed to provide relief to the consumers and on Monday announced 6 to 12 hours of power cuts in urban and rural areas of the country.
Giving excuse of closure of gas by the SNGPL to PEPCO’s five power plants, DG PEPCO Muhammad Khaild made the announcement. Talking to Pakistan Today, he said 5 power plants including Rocsh, Fauji Kabeerwala, Saif, Saphire and Orient have to be shut down, as Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (SNGPL) had suspended gas supplies.
Currently, 5 to 8 hours of power cut is carried in different parts of the country with shortfall roaming at 1,500MW. With addition of 1,000MW shortfall, the current shortfall would cross 2,500MW thus power cuts will have to be increased.
“These power plants used to produce 1,000MW of electricity and with its closure the duration of the power cuts has been increased,” Muhammad Khalid said adding the markets will have 5 hours, urban areas 6 hours and the rural areas will face 8 hours a day of power cut.
He said cement, textile and raw material industries will be exempted from the power cuts while flour and ghee industries will have four hours closure, furnace and steel mills will face up to 12-hours closure. Similarly, the agricultural tube wells will have to face 10 hours of power closure.
The sources said that it is incompetence of Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) that it could not improve power production and totally relied on gas units. They said power cuts did not increase in the winter when gas supplies were low, as at that time PEPCO managed shortfall very well but now they were claiming failure to do so.
Citing the example of the day when semi-final was played between India and Pakistan, the Independent Power Plants (IPPs) production touched 6,300MW but after that IPPs production came down to 5,700MW.
“The power production through IPPs could be increased but PEPCO is not giving attention towards that side,” said sources adding similarly, the hydel generation is touching 4,000MW, whereas, last year in these days, hydel generation crossed 4,500MW.