THERE seems to be no respite for electricity consumers from long hours of scheduled and unscheduled loadshedding. This has also become a primary constraint on the national economic development.

In fact the problem is likely to aggravate further when summer sets in as the ministry of water and power has already cautioned the nation, on February 18, to be ready to brace for a severe power crisis.

At present the total power generation is around 9,397 MW in the Wapda/Pepco system against demand of 14,500 MW during peak hours, resulting in a shortfall of over 5,000 MW. To manage the shortfall, the utility companies are resorting to massive load-shedding — almost 4-6 hours in urban and 12-16 hours in rural areas.

The situation in Karachi is not any better either, as KESC projects have not come on stream as per schedule. This is in spite of the fact that there has been an addition in installed generation capacity of 3,348 MW over the last three years, bringing total installed capacity to 23,578 MW at national level.

Corresponding to this, the dependable and available capacity is 18,913 MW, which is more than the demand in this winter season. Obviously, dependable and available power generation capacity is not being properly and effectively utilised due to a variety of factors well known to the consumers.

Ironically, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira had stated on August 2, 2012 that there was ‘no fund and fuel’ issue in electricity generation. Nepra also admits that prevalent load-shedding was not due to generation capacity constraints. According to Nepra, "these are the policy and management related issues", whereas State Bank of Pakistan, in its Annual Report 2011-12, has pointed out that the energy crisis ‘reflects the lack of a coherent policy.’

For long, the government has repeatedly made tall claims of taking steps to overcome power shortages and outages, but it has failed to improve the situation. On June 19, 2012 Minister for Water and Power Ahmed Mukhtar, though not giving any firm deadline for ending load-shedding, had committed that load-shedding would be reduced within three months. Subsequently, on July 6, 2012 he claimed that power load-shedding was nearing an end. On the contrary, electricity crisis has worsened in 2012-13. Minister of State for Water and Power Tasneem Ahmad Qureshi admitted on February 8, 2013 of 7-8 hours load-shedding in urban and 12 hours in rural areas.

According to National Transmission and Dispatch Commission Limited (NTDC), demand during peak-hours in 2011-12 was 20,058 MW compared to actual generation capability of 13,733 MW, resulting in shortfall of 6,325 MW, which represents almost one-third of total demand.

Unfortunately, the electricity crisis will further worsen in 2013-14 as addition to power generation capacity during the period would be negligible, while the progress on new power projects remains unsatisfactory. On the other hand, national demand of electricity would keep on growing rapidly, at about 10 per cent annually, owing to growing population and economic activities.

However, challenges of rising demand and constraints on supply of electricity are not being addressed in long-term plan either. Nepra’s State of Industry Report 2012 analyses that gap between supply and demand would continue to widen, as the current plans would not be adequate to meet the needs of power sector around 2020 when total demand of electricity is projected to be 32,000 MW.

NTDC has prepared the National Power System Expansion Plan 2011-2030 to reduce load-shedding in short-term, but with a focus on long-term optimum development adopting least-cost options for power generation. The emphasis is therefore on developing hydropower and utilisation of Thar coal on large scale, aiming at to provide fuel diversity and energy security.

Sadly, the document is already outdated as actual capacity addition during 2011-12 and projected during 2012-13 are far from the plan estimates. On-going projects, including RFO-based 425 MW, hydropower 347 MW, coal (UCG) 100 MW and waste-to-energy 80 MW, could not be connected to national grid. All these projects were scheduled to achieve COD during June 2011 to June 2012.

Expansion Plan projects peak-hours demand of 23,910 MW in 2013, whereas planned generation capability will be limited to 21,054 MW. This will result in a shortfall of 2,856 MW. In comparison, peak demand in 2011 was 19,000 MW. Likewise, planned generation capability in 2015 will be 23,909 MW against projected demand of 28,711 MW during peak-hours. This means the system will experience a shortfall of 4,802 MW.

Power generation capability is planned with the assumption that scheduled additions to the installed capacity would come on time, which has never been the case in reality. It is therefore likely that power crisis would continue beyond 2020.

The crisis has so far been addressed largely through ad-hoc measures, and an integrated energy planning through institutional framework has been lacking. There is an urgent need for the government to make serious efforts to ensure adequate and sustainable power supply in future.

Engr Hussain Ahmad Siddiqui is Chairman of The Institution of Engineers,Pakistan.