LAHORE, July 31: Power supply in the country has dropped by merely two per cent this year compared to last year, but loadshedding has gone up by 25 per cent because of massive demand resulting from addition of home appliances.

According to the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) record, the electricity demand in certain pockets of urban areas has grown by a whooping 25 per cent throughout the country, making load management a nightmare for the officials.

The national average growth, however, remained at 8.25 per cent but creation of pockets of overloaded consumption is testing the system beyond its limit, say officials of Pepco.

They said all urban centres had seen this lopsided growth because of 10 million home appliances sold this year. Last year, 9.85 million electric gadgets of seven categories – air-conditioners, fans, washing machines, ovens, deep freezers, refrigerators and televisions – were sold.

Addition to the number of gadgets being used today had further loaded the system, they said, but the expected 25 per cent rise in the sale of these appliances had not materialised much to the company’s relief. If that had happened, as was the case during the last few years, there would have been more trouble for the company as well as its consumers.

Since there had been very small addition in generation, they said, the crisis had worsened during the last one year. During this period, only 81 megawatt of Malakand-III Power project and 76 MW of rental power were added, whereas the demand went up by almost 1,500 MW due to these home appliances.

Hydel generation this year had dropped by 741 MW because of squeezed supplies at the Mangla Dam, which produced only 350 MW against optimum supply of 1,100 MW. Though Tarbela and Ghazi Brotha Hydel Project (GBHP) chipped in with around 5,400 MW, generation at Mangla dipped exceptionally.

In fact, distribution problems had worsened the situation. On Tuesday, Jamshoro 500KV line tripped and switched off Hubco which caused a generation loss of 900 MW. The line came back online in 20 minutes, but it took four hours to restart Hubco generation, the officials said.