LAHORE: The civil work on laying the 132kV cable underground from Sunny View to Qartaba Chowk via Meclod Road is likely to begin in September, as the first lot of the cable manufactured by a South Korean firm will be shipped to Pakistan after the inspection of experts of the Lahore Electric Supply Company.

The project, according to the officials, will not only relieve various grids of additional power transmission burden but also provide a second source to them.

According to a Lesco report shared with the Pepco management recently the first two kilometer portion would be completed in one month so that the system constraint of 132kV Meclod road is removed by the mid of October.

The report says 90 per cent of the jobs related to the conversion of the 66KV grid station to 132kV has been done.

In the next eight to10 days, a 25 km feeding 132 kV line will be commissioned for a newly constructed grid station.

Up to 90 per cent of the work on the conversion of the 66KV Malikpur to 132 KV has been completed.

The conversion of the Kanganpurgrid station from 66KV to 132kV has been completed. This was a system constraint due to overloading, complaints of low voltage, frequent breakdowns and reported accidents due to deteriorated low sagged 50 years old 66KV line. Besides this, the 132kV Sahafi Colony grid station had been added to the system, relieving three heavily loaded grid stations - Fatehgarh, Daroghwala and Batapur - of the additional burden.

“A 132kV grid station of Mandi Ahmdabad with another extension of 30km with D/C 132 T/line from Kanganpur, 132kV grid station (General Hospital), 132kV Paragon and others grid stations with transmission lines were completed on a fast track.

“Under the tranche 2 and 3 of the Asian Development Bank loan and a load flow study, 15 of 40MVA and four of 26MVA power transformers were augmented. Moreover, up to 15 11kV capacitor banks were installed at different grid stations, mostly in the Lahore city to improve voltage profile”, reads the report.

Up to 48 projects regarding the 11kV feeders against HT (high tension) have been commissioned. These included 33 in Lahore city and 13 in other districts, removing system constraints on 100 feeders ( 69 in Lahore and 21 in other areas).

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2017