Culprit behind sudden increase in loadshedding identified!
The Minister for Water and Power, to denote his apt portfolio for this piece, took a cue from his second ministerial position and undertook a firm defence of the country’s supposedly much improved energy situation under his stewardship. However, on one score he was flummoxed and caught seemingly unawares: he had ignored or forgotten the well known fact that a hellish prolonged summer usually follows our shrinking winters under prevalent weather patterns. So a nasty heat spell was all it took to throw the whole power generation and distribution system out of gear and expose perspiring citizens to the now familiar infliction of dreaded unscheduled loadshedding. The present shortfall stands at 5420 MW and this is only the start of the long, hot summer.
At a press conference on Monday, the minister presented an ‘alt-facts’ rather rosy vision of the truth, or is ‘post truth’, duly supported by an impressive string of statistics. The ubiquitous question about the latter in our haphazard and imprecise working environment concerns their veracity. And the one thing common to our circular debt-driven (this monster had again reached the Rs 328 billion mark by November 2016 and counting) energy crisis are the tall promises made about ending or reducing loadshedding, which never materialise. However, since loadshedding is likely to be a major issue in 2018, it is now politically imperative to make the right noises about it, and also some belated attempts to mitigate its impact. True, on paper there are some improvements, such as a higher overall power output, including by the IPPs despite the customary low hydel production at this time of year, opening of shut down plants including the Nandipur fiasco, better bills recovery and a slight (about two percent) reduction in line losses which alone yielded Rs. 116 billion.
The real long term solution lies in sound management, modernising the transmission system as even optimum production at full capacity can be nullified by wasteful distribution methods, and adopting a ‘Green’, environment-friendly mix of hydel, fossil fuels, solar and wind power.
