GAP between electricity supply and demand has widened with dwindling river flows, reducing hydel generation by 500 MW.

According to a senior official of Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO), hydel generation reduced by about 500 mw on Saturday as level of Tarbela Dam touched rock bottom. As a result, he added, overall hydel generation reduced to 3050 mw from the previous day s 3597 mw.

Despite shortfall in hydel generation, overall shortage of electricity did not increase to a great extent as generation by Independent Power Producers (IPPs) started picking up due to restoration of gas supplies.

Pepco official said that SNGPL had restored gas supplies to five IPPs that had been shut on April 04, 2011 due to blast in gas pipeline near Guddo.

Owing to severe gap in electricity supply, 6-14 hours of loadshedding was being observed in various parts of the country.

This amount of outages was not predicted earlier by Pepco.

In contrast, it was stated that electricity supply suspension would be less this year if compared with level of last year.