The recent wave of load shedding has crippled the routine lives. Once again people associated with power sector generally and PEPCO particularly came under severe criticism. There is no doubt that the duration of load shedding remained very high and every sector of our country suffered badly. A lot of criticism came from media and opposition parties and once again Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) was given every bad name. No wonder, PEPCO is responsible for managing power needs of the country but one should keep in mind that the company has limited resources as compare to the surging power demand. In these days, everyone criticized PEPCO and hold protests against outages but nobody tried to investigate the reason behind the load shedding and just open its guns towards PEPCO. I am not defending the PEPCO or outages but would like to share some facts and figures with the readers and consumers so that they could understand the problems being faced during last one month and decide what best could have done. In the recent one month, the production from hydel resources declined sharply and there was at least 65 percent less electricity produced from these resources while at the same time the supplies of oil and gas were disturbed badly. In the current year the load shedding remained far high as compare to similar period in previous year. The same PEPCO was operating even at that time. The only difference was the available resources. The duration of load shedding in March 2011 was far less than current year. Last year in March only two to three hours of load shedding was carried and things were moving smoothly. The reason of this difference is hydel generation, which decreased sharply this year. Currently, we are facing more than 5,000MW shortfall. The electricity shortfall in March 2011 hydel generation contributed around 5,500MW; IPPs and GENCOs produced 7,500MW thus there was around 13,000MW electricity was in the system and the demand remained around 14,500MW and shortfall around 1,500MW. But this year shortfall increased to 5,500MW with hydel generation remained not more than 2,500MW and IPPs and GENCOs gave 7,000MW while demand remained more than 14,500MW. The hydel generation dropped and there was clear drop of 3,000MW. At the same time, the supplies of oil decreased to the power plants resulting in further drop in electricity generation. Everyone knows that water level at Mangla and Terbela dams is at dead level and it is due to late summer. The winter season remained long and continued till mid of March on the hilly areas and resolutely snow melted late and water level dropped in the dams. However, the water level will improve with water coming after snow melt. Unfortunately, some media sections tried to give an impression as if PEPCO higher-ups are least bothered for the load shedding and people’s miseries. In fact, the reality is altogether different and the officials of the company tried their best to overcome the crisis and worked round the clock to overcome outages. The load shedding in the coming days would decrease, as hydel generation would improve while PEPCO would also get oil supplies for power plants. On the instruction of Prime Minister the oil supplies have been improved to power plants and it is expected that Orient, Roche and Lal Pir power plants would start production thus giving 2,000MW electricity to the system. It is expected that shortfall would reduce and load shedding duration would also reduce.
The writer works at NTDC/PEPCO.
