ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Ministry of Water and Power and State Grid Corporation of China are working closely to build an interconnection grid for electricity.

The grid “will mutually benefit both the countries by utilising each others energy potential”, Secretary Water and Power Muhammad Younas Dagha was quoted by his ministry as telling a 700-plus delegate of Global Interconnection Conference in Beijing.

The interconnection grid will allow Pakistan to meet its energy demands and will also enable China to benefit from the potential of clean energy in Pakistan, especially hydro-electricity on the Indus river cascade lying all along the route of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Indus cascade involves around 60,000MW potential of hydro-electricity through a dozen of hydropower projects, including dams between Satpara and Tarbela.

Dagha said Pakistan was very much positioned now to become energy corridor for the region and facilitate the exchange and optimised use of clean energy available in the region of South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East and China and could play an active role in the Global Energy Interconnection.

Talking about the upcoming Central Asia-South Asia (CASA-1,000) project, Dagha said Pakistan had a unique geographical position, strategically located at the confluence of South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East and China and “we are very much aware of the opportunity offered by our geographical location”.

He said Pakistan had been working on the project for many years and had succeeded in signing an agreement on Central Asia South Asia transmission line, (CASA-1,000), with Tajikistan, Kyrgyz Republic and Afghanistan to build a 1,400kms long HVDC transmission line which will bring 1,300MW of clean power to Pakistan.

He said Pakistan “already had grid interconnection with Iran” and plans are afoot to further enhance it.

Pakistan, he said, was also working with other South-Asian countries to bring interconnectivity within South-Asia and had “found a lot of interest in CASA-1,000 in the countries of the region such as Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Russia”.

Dagha told the conference that Pakistan had the potential and was fast becoming an energy-surplus from an energy-deficit country in the next three years due to the volume of projects initiated by the government.

He said Pakistan was initiating work on 10,400MW of new power generation and 660 HVDC transmission line with the State Grid.

He said Pakistan had sizeable potential of untapped and clean energy resources apart from fossil fuels.

He said the country was expected to “become self-sufficient in power generation in 2018 and still be left with an untapped potential of more than 60,000MW of hydro-electric power, most of which lies right across the Pakistan-China border”.

He said there was also an untapped potential of more than 90,000MW of wind power in the south and an unlimited potential of solar power all across the 850,000 sq-kms of the country, with almost 300 days of bright sunshine.

Dagha said Pakistan was currently producing more than 40 per cent of its electricity from non-fossil sources, mainly hydropower and was working closely with international players to move towards more sustainable energy.

Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2016