September 18, 2008	Thursday	Ramazan 17, 1429

KARACHI, Sept 17: With a slight drop in temperature, enhanced oil and gas supplies to increase power generation and the improved support of two independent power producers and Wapda, the Karachi Electric Supply Company managed to curtail load-shedding hours by supplying a little over 2,000 megawatts to the city on Wednesday.

As the maximum temperature climbed down to 33.8 degrees centigrade, after a long spell of heat wave that had gripped the city, the total electricity demand dropped to around 2,200 megawatts. Besides, the power utility generated about 11 megawatts from its own resources with the enhanced oil and gas supplies.

The sources said the KESC through its own generation resources could produce 1,100 megawatts, including up to 1,000MWs from the Bin Qasim Thermal Power Station. The generation output from the Bin Qasim plant increased as the Sui Southern Gas Company provided 300MMFCD gas supply to the KESC.

Many areas came under two spells of load-shedding till Iftar. Each time the power supply was suspended for over an hour and a half on the day when the senate’s standing committee on water and power, led by Senator Javed Leghari, met the Abraj Capital-led new management of the power utility.

The sources said the Defence-Cogen desalination plant, which could produce 80 megawatts, was out of order and it would remain so for long for the purpose of maintenance of its turbine. Eighty megawatts generated by the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant had also not been available since Monday morning due to the loss of transmission lines, they said.

A spokesman for the power utility said the KESC faced power shortage of 150MWs to 200MWs on Wednesday.

Later talking to Dawn, Senator Javed Leghari said he had cautioned that if the new management of the power utility did not make any phenomenal improvement in its generation and transmission systems within the next six months, there would be more frequent and prolonged outages next summer. He said the new management had been asked to increase the generation level to an optimum by running the Bin Qasim power plant and Korangi Thermal Power Station to their full capacity.