LAHORE: Drastic reduction in temperatures due to heavy rain on Friday rid most parts of Lahore of outages but the rural areas of adjoining districts Sheikhupura and Nankana Sahib continued to reel under the menace.

The urban areas especially Lahore witnessed reduction in the loadshedding hours except some power interruptions caused by tripping of dozens of 11kV electricity feeders in the city and other districts.

Officials say the situation in rural areas was due to certain constraints in the 500kV Sheikhupura grid station leading to disturbance at the 220kV in Kala Shah Kaku and various 132kV grid stations of Lahore.

Friday’s downpour brought no relief to rural areas

“Following Friday’s rain the total demand of Lesco dropped to 3,500MW from 4,600MW. It further squeezed our shortfall to 300MW or so, enabling us to reduce loadshedding hours in all areas.

However, we couldn’t do so in the rural areas of Sheikhupura and Nankana Sahib due to system constraints developed at the 500kV grid station that continued to be overloaded due to non-replacement of the low capacity transformers with the 250MVA ones at the 220KV bus wire and closure of a power plant for maintenance,” explained a Lesco official.

He said the heavy rain caused tripping of 74 electricity feeders including 45 in Lahore. All the tripped feeders were energised till 11:30am.

Officials of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) and various power distribution companies including Lesco have been blaming each other for long over the issues of power generation, allocation/quota and system constraints.

According to National Power Control Centre General Manager Ilyas Ahmad, loadshedding in Lahore and the adjoining districts is due to constraints and line losses, and not due to low generation. “We have almost lifted loadshedding for the last couple of days across the country.

But loadshedding in Lesco areas including Lahore is being observed on high loss feeders or due to various constraints in the system,” he told Dawn.

A Disco official doesn’t agree with the NPCC GM and says when it claims to have curtailed the loadshedding, why it is happening in Lahore. “Though the situation on Friday was comparatively better, why Lesco continued to be provided 1,400MW less power than its total demand during the last many days,” he asked.

“For the last many days, Lesco -- country’s biggest distribution company with 4.2 million consumers -- is not being allowed to draw more than 3,200MW despite the fact that its demand continues to increase (reaching 4,600MW). So the main problem is with the NTDC. If it increases the Lesco quota, it will not be borne or sustained by the overloaded 500kV Sheikhupura grid,” the official said.

In order to avoid “forced loadshedding” in the city areas, Lesco disconnected its five grid stations from the 500kV Sheikhupura’s bus wires and connected these with the 220kV at Kala Shah Kaku.

Responding to the Lesco official’s claims, the NPCC said: “Yes this is happening with the NTDC’s 500kv system in Sheikhupura. But it doesn’t mean there is no problem with Lesco’s distribution system as various technical constraints have also developed in their system leading to loadshedding and other issues,” Mr Ilays claimed.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2017