November 28, 2008	Friday	Ziqa'ad 29, 1429

LAHORE, Nov 27: Loadshedding has been resumed because a 500MW unit of the Kot Addu Power Company has gone offline for unexplained reasons and the Pakistan Electric Power Company has failed to transmit another 250MW because of system constraints.

Pepco Director-General Tahir Basharat Cheema said that the total generation and transmission loss had reached 750MW over the past two days because of the failure of the Kapco management to bring its unit back online.

Grid managers in the Lahore Electric Supply Company claimed that they had been given a loadshedding schedule of four hours a day which was being followed for the past two days.

However, Mr Cheema said the Kapco unit would resume function and loadshedding would end by Friday morning. The Kapco management had promised to bring the unit online by Wednesday evening.

He said the company was generating 11,500MW against a 12,000MW demand. He said generation by other independent power producers and the Water and Power development Authority’s hydel and thermal units was normal.

Meanwhile, a reduction in gas supply of 500,000 cubic feet has left the gas turbine station in Faisalabad and a rental power plant of 276MW out of operation and affected the Muzaffargarh power station but it has not directly contributed to a deficit in generation.

The director-general of Pepco said that since the system was fully stretched, any problem with supply or transmission directly translated into load management, if not loadshedding. There was no room for any contingency, he said.

A Lesco official said the company had not been informed about the magnitude of shortage and the day the loadshedding would end, but it had been told to switch off supply for four a day, which indicated a deficit of around 17 per cent.