04 January 2005	Tuesday	22 Ziqa'ad 1425

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LAHORE, Jan 3:The Indus River System Authority agreed on Monday to release 5,000 cusecs of water from Tarbela dam to control the extent of load shedding.

The Irsa had squeezed supplies to zero-level on Sunday from Tarbela dam that raised the spectre of massive load shedding.

The last-minute intervention from the Ministry of Water and Power saved Wapda which had been struggling to meet the daily demand of over 10,000 megawatts and resorting to unannounced load shedding in rural areas.

The latest release of water might enable Wapda to control the degree load shedding but it was still left with a shortfall of around 1,000 megawatts keeping in view statistics of daily demand.

According to Wapda record, the daily national consumption was well above 10,000 megawatts. Its own thermal generation on Sunday was around 3,363MW. Another 4,518MW came from independent power producers. Another 344MW might come from AES Lalpir, which came online late Monday evening, thus taking the total thermal generation capacity to 8,225MW.

With the dwindling water releases from both dams, hydroelectric generation was on the decline. On Sunday, Tarbela and Ghazi Barotha hydroelectric projects jointly contributed only 450MW, against their installed capacity of around 5,000MW.

Mangla Dam had been reduced to 120MW only and the Chashma Power Plant to 94MW against a total installed capacity of 332MW. The Warsak Dam was injecting 145mw into the national power system.

The gas-driven Faisalabad plant was contributing 180MW. While it took Wapda's total generation to around 9,300mw, but it left a 900MW gap in demand and supply. The Wapda authorities believed that they could generate around 700MW, instead Sunday's 450MW from Tarbela and GBHP combined by concentrating release of 5,000 cusecs of water during peak hours.

But they failed to explain where the rest of around 500MW would would come if it was not resorting to quiet load sheding. Under pressure from the Ministry of Water and Power, Wapda had not been officially resorting to load shedding.

Though it had announced load shedding schedule twice during the past two months, but had backed out on both occasions when the minister of water and power angrily intervened, sacking one Wapda official for issuing load shedding schedule without consulting him before hand.

Wapda officials believed that the authority would have a hard time meeting the daily demand till Jan 20 when irrigation supplies to both provinces start normalizing and water started flowing from both dams.