LAHORE: National power shortfall continued to be in excess of 5,000MW despite all efforts, necessitating around eight-hour loadshedding in urban areas and over 10 on rural feeders.

According to the Energy Management Cell data, hot weather on Tuesday witnessed demand going up to 18,507MW against a generation of 13,230MW – leaving a gap of 5,277MW – and the country without power for 30 to 40 per cent of 24 hours.

The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) continued getting 660MW despite recent ministerial announcements to suspend supplies to it and divert the same to Punjab. But, it has not happened so far.

The hydel contribution surged to 4,527MW with improvement in national river flows and the Independent Power Producers generated 6,374MW, to largely save the day for the power planners.

The Pakistan Electric Power Company’s (Pepco) own thermal stations, however, produced only 1,689MW.

Non-provision of fuel continued dogging the system with four units (Kapco 140MW, Orient 213MW, Saif 105MW and Sapphire 209MW) partly or fully out of operation because of fuel crisis.

The Foundation Power (175MW) also remained idle because of technical fault.