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Pakistan ranked 3rd best in hydel power growth
LAHORE: Pakistan has been ranked 3rd in the world among top 20 countries for newly installed hydropower capacity in 2018.
The country was placed at third position by the United Kingdom-based renowned organisation — International Hydropower Association (IHA) — in its recently issued report titled “2019: Hydropower Status Report — Sector Trends and Insights”.
Formed under the auspices of Unesco in 1995 as a forum to promote and disseminate good practice about hydropower, IHA champions continuous improvement and sustainable practices across the sector.
According to IHA report while listing down top 20 countries by newly installed capacity states that Pakistan managed to add 2,487MW of hydel electricity in 2018 following China and Brazil at the first and second rung that added 8,540MW and 3,866MW to their systems respectively.
Turkey with an addition of 1085MW and Angola with an addition of 668MW remained at 4th and 5th positions respectively as far as newly installed hydro capacity is concerned. The neighbouring India stood at the 8th position by adding 535MW hydel electricity to its system recently.
The report places Tajikistan at No.6 for adding 605 MW followed by Ecuador (556MW), India (535MW), Norway (419), Canada (401MW), Austria (385), Combodia (300MW), Laos (254MW), Zimbabwe (150MW), United States (141MW), Iran (140MW), Congo (121MW), Colombia (111MW), Peru (111MW) and Chile (110MW).
As far as recent addition of hydropower in Pakistan is concerned, the country registered an increase of 36 per cent in its total hydel generation capacity in just one year, as prior to this, Wapda could only manage to take its hydel generation to 6,902 MW in 59 years of its inception from the year 1958 to 2017. The country has an indentified potential of generating 60,000MW of low-cost hydel electricity.
Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2019
Comments (19) Closed
Finally some thing good
Let's keep up the good work.
This good was done by previous governments.
Before people start to give away credit for that, please spare a thought if you can buy bread for 1 dollar yet you purchased it for 2.50 and your leader took a cut of 1.50 it had already put you at disadvantage.
Secondly last line says it all we have potential of 66000mw and we have just about reached 10% of that!
Let us see how PTI government performs
Solar power is getting cheaper than coal and hydro projects!
PTI can blame previous govt for this as well because they don't know how to give credit to others.
Thanks Nawaz
Good show Pakistan. Kudos from and Indian.
These projects did not complete in 9 months. These require years to complete. Don't forget Navaz Sharif for getting Chinese into these projects.
It didn't say at what costs? Neelam Jhelum project, according to Audit General, has a loss of Rs 700Billion. Pakistan's energy future must be Renewables of Solar, Wind, Biomass, and Pumped Hydro. Hydel is a solution but an expensive one. However, since Pakistan has water shortage issues, Hydel projects are important. A balanced approach with contained costs has been missing, so far. Also, policies for more utilization of existing hydro to be used for solar is missing. Floating Solar panels in water will cool them and provide more electricity, stop evaporation of water while using the same existing transmission lines. Imagine no new fossil fuel plants and no new transmission lines being installed saving the country billions. Romania and Thailand has done it. Technology solutions are there but the WILL to do them is missing and not even being mentioned.
Thanks to Nawaz government
Why thanking NS, when power generation is a matter which pertains to province after the 18th, 19th and 20th amendments. Moreover out of the total of 2,487MW capacity built the report does not shows the capacity added by each province. Isn't it because of KPK that built small dams in the last year? correct me if i am wrong...
@ZK, wrong, large hydropower is a federal jurisdiction. This is largely tarbela ext 4 and neelum Jhelum completed by pmln and many of their other projects are in the pipeline
Work of nawaz is showing results, IK was a wrong choice only U turns
Neelum Jhelum was started by Musharraf and pursued by PPP and PMLN.
Bunji has 8100 MW just at ONE location
But that was then.
@Prateik, eye does it matter which govt did it? Did they bring the money from home? These projects are finance by the government of Pakistan and its their duty because we hired and paid them for good work.
But it doesn't mean they don't have to bring back the loot mall