LAHORE, April 22: The electricity shortfall shot up by 50 per cent of the demand on Friday, keeping half of the country without power and forcing Pepco to carry out up to 16 hours of loadshedding.According to the Pakistan Electric Power Company, it faces a shortfall of 5,010MW, with the demand at 14,475MW. Pepco officials said that a reduction in supply of furnace oil and gas, shortage of funds to buy oil and reduced water releases from two major dams were the main factors leading to this “disastrous situation”.

They admitted that Pepco’s own thermal units were not working properly; half of them were on forced outage because of lack of proper maintenance and the rest were not getting oil.

“Three main thermal units -- Jamshoro, Muzaffargarh and Guddu -- are partially on forced outages, leaving a shortage of about 900MW. The 700MW Jamshoro unit is on 180MW forced outrage. Of the 1,130MW GTPS Muzaffargarh, machines generating 300MW are out of order. At the 1,155MW Guddu power plant, units for 400MW are lying idle,” a Pepco official said.

He said that none of the plants got any gas supply, affecting the performance of other units as well. “That is why out of the total capacity of about 3,500MW, the company’s own thermal units could produce only 1,396MW on Friday.”

He said the Faisalabad Combined Cycle Unit (210MW) was completely shut because it neither had gas nor money to purchase diesel.

The non-supply of gas hit three other plants -- Sapphire Electric Power (225MW), Saif Power Project (209MW) and Orient Power Project (212MW). They are producing only 495MW.

The fuel crisis has completely shut down Japan Power (135MW) and Saba Power (134MW).

On Friday, Pepco received only 11,000 tons of furnace oil against the total requirement of 36,000 tons. The reduced supply, another Pepco official said, had played havoc with the company’s generation plan.

“Pakistan State Oil cannot be faulted much for reduced oil supplies because Pepco is neither paying nor giving any hope to PSO which has to pay advance to foreign sellers. The huge PSO receivables against Pepco and IPPs (independent power produces) are a fact of the power sector. Pepco has no money, gas, oil and water to generate power,” he added.

The National Power Control Centre (NPCC), which is supposed to balance demand and supply, is also resorting to massive unscheduled loadshedding because it can supply only as much power as it receives.

The official said the NPCC had carried out unplanned loadshedding of 2,000MW ‘over the past 24 hours’. Total shortfall stood at 7,000MW and demand at 14,000MW.

The situation, he said, would worsen over the next few days because weather was getting hotter. “Once air conditioners are switched on throughout the country, which Pepco is expecting in a week’s time, it will add about 5,000MW to the demand, and things can go haywire then,” he feared.

APP adds: Water and Power Minister Syed Naveed Qamar said on Friday that the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) had been asked to prepare a plan for construction of 32 small and medium dams across the country in two phases.

During the question-hour in the National Assembly, he said that 12 small and medium dams would be built in the first phase.

Two reservoirs will be built in Sindh, five in Balochistan, three in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata and two in Punjab. According to the schedule, Mr Qamar said, the dams would be completed by 2014, depending “on availability of funds”.

He said that 20 dams would be constructed in the second phase.

Answering a question, the minister said India had so far built 43 hydroelectric projects on “our western rivers of Indus, Jhelum and Chenab”.

Thirteen of these projects were built before the signing of the Indus Water Treaty in 1960 and about 30 after it.

“Only eight of the 30 can be categorised as major projects and the rest are mini and micro-hydroelectric projects having no downstream effects,” the minister added. He said India was continuously constructing power projects on “our western rivers at an average rate of one project in two years”.