LAHORE, April 15: The power shortage continues to torment consumers and Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) appears to be helpless as provinces refuse to release additional water from dams and temperature continues to rise.
According to Wapda officials, the deficit even on Sunday (public and industrial holiday) was over 700MW. By Monday (today), it would touch around 2,000MW.
There are at least two ways to deal with the crisis: Either the authority should increase its hydel or thermal generation, or the nation adopts effective conservation measures.
The authority cannot make any addition to its hydel generation because the government has stopped it from doing so. The government said that the private sector would instead make the addtion, which it has not.
The second option with the authority is that it should replace under performing thermal units to achieve its installed thermal capacity of 4,900MW.
But, in order to so, it again needs massive funding that is not available to it. At present, thermal units are only providing around 3,300MW against the installed capacity of 4,900MW. Out of 65 thermal machines, one or two remain out of order and thermal contribution effectively comes down to 3,000MW.
The Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB) is supposed to arrange additional power and it has failed miserably in its duty.
The first plant, under its supervision, is supposed to come online by January 2009.
In these circumstances, the authority is left with only one option: plead for national drive to conserve energy. For doing so, it had printed conservation steps on over 16 million bills that it prints every month.
The government also needs to join in the campaign for conservation, but for that, it needs to accept the problem.
Guided by political expediencies and misled by the ministry for water and power, the government has not been able to press for national conservation. Since there is no power available to the nation for the next two years, the only option is conservation.
Even after two years, it would not be sufficient because by that time load growth would neturalise rather outstrip the addition by far. The situation shows that the only option the nation is left with is conservation, he insisted.
The government needs to invest heavily in the power sector for the next few years, be it hydel, thermal, coal, nuclear or wind. The situation would only worsen until and unless there is some quantum jump in generation like one major dam coming online. Till then, the nation could only rely on conservation or face the worst kind of loadshedding, he warned.
He said the government should make power investment a public-private initiative rather than a purely private sector affair.
He said: "One of the independent power producers (IPP) has showed an investment of $2.23 million per megawatt, whereas a joint venture by Wapda and a private company is costing $0.6 million per megawatt. That is a difference of almost four times. All private initiatives are grossly overvalued and charge so much that it would take power out of the fiscal reach of the common man. The government needs to keep its eyes open when signing such power agreements."
