LAHORE, Sept 30: Facing a shortfall of about 763mw, the Water and Power Development Authority will resort to three to four hours 'formal' load shedding from Saturday (tomorrow).
Federal Water and Power Minister Liaquat Jatoi convened a meeting on Friday at the Wapda House to review the entire situation and decide the duration of load shedding. Although the minister denies taking any formal decision to resort to load shedding, the Wapda officials concede that the shortfall is severe and crippling the system.
According to sources in Wapda, the authority on Thursday faced 2,400mw drop in hydel generation. It was getting only 4,000mw from both dams against 6,400mw production a few days ago.
Mangla releases had dropped to 8,000 cusecs and was generating only 1,200mw while releases from Tarbela had come down to 53,000 cusecs. It was now generating around 2,800mw, they said.
On the other hand, most of the independent power producers (IPPs) were being maintained. The Hubco would take another three to four days before getting online while Uch Power might take another week. So would Roche and Japanwala, they said, adding this had created a situation of crisis in supply of power.
The electricity demand had not come down despite some relief in weather, they said, and added: "Even on Thursday, the peak demand was around 10,900mw against a total supply of about 10,200mw.
Around 110,000 tube wells in country are also running because of water shortage and increasing demand of power." However, the Wapda officials hoped that the situation would improve in the next few days.
With Hubco coming back into operation, the authority would be able to inject over 1,000mw into its distribution system. It had also advanced money to some small IPPs for solving their problems and helped them jump into operation quickly. The demand might reduce within next few days with weather further improving, the sources said.
The gap between demand and supply would be automatically adjusted by breakdowns wherever system got overloaded, claimed a former member (power) of Wapda. He said the ground reality would not change whether the minister agreed to it or not.
The authority has already started planning for load shedding for over three hours across the country and all the distribution companies (Discos) have already been directed to make their own load management plans, claims an official of Lesco.
Meanwhile, the water situation in both dams remained abysmal. The level of the Tarbela Dam on Thursday morning was 1,470 feet against 1,541 feet on the corresponding day of the previous year. While the present level of Mangla Dam was 11,56 feet compared to the previous year's 1,202 feet on this day.
BREAKDOWN: Several localities in the city witnessed power breakdown on Thursday due to which people took out protest demonstrations. The protests were held in Shah Alam market and area of Jia Musa at Shahdara. Reports from a number of towns like Gujrat, Daska, Vehari and Sargodha suggest that load shedding has already begun.