HYDERABAD, Aug 17: Taking serious notice of a technical fault in the Liberty power plant for the last 15 days, the chairman of Wapda has sanctioned a power transformer of 220/132KV and of 160MVA capacity to be installed in Guddu for transfer of additional power from the north.

A spokesman for the Hesco in a statement issued here on Monday said the company was resorting to load shedding of 100MW during the peak hours due to the technical fault. He said the remaining 100MW was being managed through other alternative sources. The spokesman said the situation would continue till the fault at the Liberty power plant was rectified.

He said arrangements ordered by the Wapda chairman would reduce loadshedding to a great extent. He said the construction of the 220KV Shikarpur grid station was in progress and the Wapda chairman and the member power had directed that the project be completed without delay.

The spokesman said the project was expected to be commissioned by January 2005, which would make available additional power for the upper Sindh and the power voltage to consumers would be normalised.

He said in the present situation an acute shortage of 200MW, the load shedding was being restricted to half an hour to one hour. The Hesco chief appealed to customers to face the situation with patience and expressed the hope that the normal supply would be restored within next 20 days.