May 16, 2006	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 17, 1427

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LAHORE, May 15: Wapda is constraint to continue load management till the drop in temperature as its distribution system is repeatedly getting overloaded and overheated, necessitating a cooling off period of 30 to 60 minutes. Wapda Chairman Tariq Hamid said here on Monday while addressing a press conference. He said that the authority had 700 grid stations all over the country and all of them were not uniformly loaded. Some of them are gross overloaded in certain parts of the day, thus some breather is necessary for the overheated gadgets, he said.

He said the authority had been basing all its planning on the projections of 7.9 per cent load growth. The Planning Commission gave this figure of 7.9 per cent to the authority, he said, adding but, of late, there had been a sudden growth of 25 per cent, putting all its planning topsy turvy.

Substantiating his point of view, he said that over 84 per cent consumers belonged to domestic category and they had been using only 43 per cent of power. Now, he said, there is a substantial jump in consumption in this category. All this has happened because of people, adding load without informing the authority, he said. During the last few months, he said the sale of washing machines had gone up by 300 per cent. All these gadgets translate into massive load growth which the authority is unable to cope with, he said.

The authority produced 1,300mw more power as compared to last year on May 13, he said. But all of it went to cater to increase in demand, he said. Even then, he said it had 13,632mw against a demand of 12,486mw. He said the figures showed that Wapda had sufficient supply but it was unable to deal with overloaded grid stations which caused power outages and trippings.

The chairman insisted that the authority was in a position to cater to the needs of people as far as the present consumption was concerned, but it had no method to deal with overheated grids. If it does not switch off these overheated grids, the entire system may get affected and get down ultimately, he said. Thus, it is helpless in this regard and has no option but to cool off the system as and if required, he said.

The authority, he said, has given all its load growth projection planning to the government and is now waiting for any addition in load generation. He said the authority was not allowed to invest in any kind of generation except hydel. At present, he said it had installed hydel capacity of 6,400mw but produced only 4,700 on Sunday because of low water availability. Hopefully, he said it would improve in the next few days and the authority would be able to add 1,700mw to its total tally.

The chairman claimed that the authority continued to invest in its distribution system but people kept adding to load with a greater speed. The authority has recently installed over 2,500 capacitors in its system, and plans to invest Rs85 billion in the next five years, he said. But massive load growth is adding to its distribution problems, he said.