KARACHI: KESC seeks Hubco link to avert loadshedding
By Bahzad Alam Khan
KARACHI, March 26: If a direct link is not established between the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation and Hubco, the power utility will have to resort to loadshedding this summer in case of a breakdown at any of its generation plants.
This was stated by the head of the KESC generation, grid and transformation, Lt-Col Sardar Khan, at a news briefing on Wednesday at the Civil Aviation Authority 132 kilovolt grid station, near Jinnah Terminal.
He said that in any case the direct link between the KESC and Hubco, an independent power producer of the Water and Power Development Authority, made more sense because the indirect link taking a longer route caused line losses — also known as technical losses or copper losses — of 32 megawatts or thereabouts.
He said the KESC had 52 grid stations and 102 power transformers with the total transformation capability of about 3,387 megavolt-amperes. “Out of 102 transformers, at least 76 get overloaded in summer and become prone to tripping. In order to prevent them from tripping, which is in any case not good for a transformer, the KESC has to switch off power supply to areas in rotation. This option is a lesser evil because in the event of tripping of a transformer, at least 2,500 consumers lose their power supply.”
Mr Khan said a large number of KESC transformers were living on borrowed time. “The life of a power transformer, which is used for stepping up or stepping down the voltage of an electric power supply, is 30 years. When a transformer becomes old, its winding has to be changed. But this requires funds which the KESC does not have in abundance.”
Answering a question, Lt-Col Zahid Hamid of the recovery, store and purchase department said the new connection policy recently announced by the KESC would not result in further overloading of power transformers. “To begin with, the policy is announced for mainly residential consumers whose load is insignificant anyway. Second, when the residential consumers are not given power connections by the KESC, they resort to power pilferage, thus utilizing electricity without even paying for it.”
Major Saqib Saeed of the intelligence wing said his department was tasked to curtail power pilferage, stop abuse of procedure by KESC staff and ensure that the complaints of consumers are taken care of in time. “The intelligence wing has so far detected 12,000 cases of power theft by industrial consumers and some domestic consumers, enabling the KESC to prepare bills of about Rs2.3 billion. The KESC has managed to recover Rs1.6 billion from this amount.”
He said the KESC kept an unfailing eye on its officials as well. “The power utility has taken action against 12 erring officials. Ten of them were actually dismissed after being found guilty,” he said.
Earlier, Lt-Col Mohammad Aslam of the administration department told newsmen at the KESC headquarters that contrary to widespread perception, the power utility was an understaffed organization. “It is a widely held view that the KESC is overstaffed. This is not correct. As against the authorized strength of 14,000 staff, the power utility has about 10,500 officials, including 1,440 officers. Since there has been a government ban on regular appointments since 1993, the KESC has engaged a large number of people on contract.”
He said previously the overtime ratio in the power utility was 270 per cent, “because a large number of officials misused this facility”. He added that the overtime ratio had been brought down to 70 per cent.
Later, speaking at the KESC customer service centre III at Gizri in Defence Housing Authority, Major Shahzad Ahmed told newsmen that about 80 per cent of consumer complaints were taken care of within two hours. “Previously some 61,000 consumers were dealt with by one customer service centre with two telephones. Now these consumers have been divided into four subdivisions with eight telephone operators attending to their complaints round the clock.”
He said that in his zone 55 consumers had availed themselves of the recently announced new connection policy. He added that 46 cases had already been dealt with.
Lt-Col Zahid Hamid said meters would soon be installed on pole-mounted transformers which would keep a record of the number of units sent out and the number of units billed. He added that this technical measure would go a long way towards checking power theft.
He said that before the restructuring of the Defence zone average bill used to be Rs250 per consumer. He said that the Gulshan zone, Saddar zone, Site zone and Korangi zone would be restructured one by one.
He said that the army monitoring teams helped the power utility detect power pilferage in addition to their regular duties.
According to a brief prepared by the KESC defence zone, transmission and distribution losses, which used to be around 38.49 per cent in March 2002, came down to 18.72 per cent in February 2003.
