LAHORE:Despite change in weather and subsequent relatively lower demand, Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) Tuesday decided to continue with up to six hours a day outages under its revised load management schedule.
As temperature lowers around 30 Celsius instead of typical summer heat of 40 plus Celsius and will continue to fall in coming months, reduction in electricity demand is a routine phenomenon. However, it seems that power managers give a miss to what ultimately could be a solace for the consumers.
Lesco management has no answer to a query raised by this scribe about planned outages. They are clueless why it is essential for them to maintain typical summer-time long duration of outages even in relatively mild weather of late-summer/early autumn months. Much to the surprise of hapless consumers, the power utility decided to continue following same “Load Management Programme” from September 1, 2020 which it had started to implement from June 1, 2020 at the peak of summer season.
As per the latest load management schedule being implemented from 1st September, consumers living in category-V feeders will be worst-hit as they face six hours a day outages. Similarly, consumers residing in category-IV feeders having losses between 30.1 percent and 40 percent are braving four hours outages daily. People inhabiting in category-III feeders having losses between 20.1 and 30 percent will continue to face two hours a day outages.
Lesco, however, exempted people living in the feeders having zero to 20 percent losses from outages. Power utility also continues to giving exemption to industry from outages.
There is only a deviation in new and old load management plan as now it is being envisaged that electricity demand of industrial sector falling under Lesco is expected to increase by about 150mw.
According to new load management programme, Lesco assessed maximum load of 3560mw. The power load management plan is uniform for all similar feeders as it is applicable to urban and rural areas alike.
The power utility also decided to continue penalising all consumers hooked to distribution system in a feeder with same intensity of outages. There has been criticism over Lesco and other distribution companies for adopting losses-based power load-shedding formula. Many argued that these arrangements were an undue punishment for those who were religiously paying their respective bills every month and not indulged in electricity theft.
This policy has either yielded any positive outcome as far as reducing losses are concerned. The supply management under a so-called reward and reprimand policy has been adopted and said to be a deterrent against electricity theft. However, it is a matter of fact that distribution losses of several power utilities, including Lesco has stubbornly been on higher side.
Meanwhile, a Lesco official said that two basic domestic consumer categories were given total exemption from outages and thus significant consumer-base under power utility had still been outages-free while there was 100 percent exemption given to industrial units from power cuts. When contacted, Imran Afzal, Additional Director, Customer Service, Lesco who also holds charge of Public Relations was not available for comments.