Govt approves Rs1.1bln transmission upkeep project

KARACHI: The Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms has approved a Rs1.067 billion worth of project to improve electricity transmission system in Sindh and Balochistan. 

An official said the project aims to avoid frequent tripping in the system of the National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC) across the provinces and evacuate coal power.  

 “The project will be financed through international financing institutions and NTDC own resources,” the official added.

According to the details, the main objective of the project is to improve reliability of the NTDC network in the southern area by replacing outdated equipment and installing shunt reactors, protection relays, event recorder, fault locator and fault recorder.

The project also envisages rehabilitation of around a dozen grid stations, including Jamshoro, Dadu Guddi, NKI Hala Road, Shikarpur, Sibbi, Quetta Industrial, TM Khan Road, Khuzdar and Loralai grid. 

The official said the power generation capacity is increasing day by day. “To cope with the growing demand, capacity enhancement of the NTDC transmission and transformation systems will be required annually,” the official added.

Energy crisis in Pakistan has deepened and demand and supply gap is hovering around 5,000-megawatt.

Government is making efforts to resolve the issue and the transmission improvement project will help reduce power shortages in the country by evacuating coal power.

The NTDC’s transmission system hardly bears the load of 17,000 MW. It causes frequent outages. Any load beyond this increases the likelihood of a breakdown in the distribution network, which is becoming more common.  Therefore, it is imperative to rehabilitate the entire NTDC system, including transmission and grid stations.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), in a report, said the electricity crisis stems from years-old distribution system and has little to do with the lack of generation capacity.

Lack of generation capacity was the main cause of electricity shortage till 2012. However, now bottlenecks in the distribution network constrain supply.  The report said policymakers continued to emphasise on adding more generation capacity instead of addressing the core issues like price distortion, high generation cost and low efficiency of distribution system.