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Friday March 29, 2024

No electricity loadshedding by October: power secy

By Khalid Mustafa
February 02, 2017

ISLAMABAD: In a much-awaited positive development, Pakistan is all set to be purged of the menace of electricity loadshedding by October this year as over 6,500 MW electricity will be added by that time, Water and Power Secretary Younas Dagha told The News in an exclusive talk here on Wednesday evening.

However, the once much-touted coal based Gaddani Power Park of 6,600 MW, which was earlier included in the second priority list of CPEC projects, has now been abandoned as the government has decided not to install more plants on imported fuel. The land of Gaddani has been handed over to the Ministry of Petroleum andNatural Resources where in Parco is reportedly going to install deep conversion refinery. In future, the government will concentrate on projects at Thar coal field and increase its focus on erecting hydro power projects with dams discouraging the reliance on imported fuel.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will formally perform ground breaking ceremony of much delayed but strategically very important project of $14.5 billion Diamer-Bahsha dam in December 2017. This would be another feather in the cap of chief executive of the country.

The dam portion at cost of $5 billion will be erected with indigenous resources under which Rs60 billion each year from Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) will be arranged till its completion. The financing plan through indigenous resources had already been approved by the prime minister. For this, Wapda will submit revised PC-I of the Diamer-Basha dam with Planning Commission with separate parts of the projects - dam and power houses - for approval. The government will ensure interest-free loans or grants for the power houses and will also encourage Chinese investment in some parts of the power houses.

So far, 95 percent of the land for the project has been attained at a cost of Rs56 billion. The remaining portion of the land will also be acquired within 2-4 months. The land for dam site, however, has been fully acquired.

In the first phase till March 2018, the government headed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has ensured the availability of the electricity in the country with additional supply of 9000 MW of electricity and under second phase, the projects in power sector that are to be completed, will ensure the energy security with affordable prices.

Fully contented with the 3 years hard work in increasing the generation of electricity and improving the transmission and distribution system, jubilant Mr Dagha said the time has come to reap the dividends and the nation will have a sigh of relief in the month of October 2017 as there will be no load shedding with the blessings of Allah Almighty.

During the three year hard time, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been kind enough in removing the all the bottlenecks involved in the power projects enabling the ministry of water and power to achieve the target of erasing the load shedding much before.

He heralded that over 9000 MW will be added in the system by March 2018 reinforcing the end to the load shedding once for all. Out of 9000 MW, 3600 MW of electricity will come in the system through the three LNG based power plants, 2640 MW from coal based power plants one at Sahiwal and other at Port Qasim, 700 MW from two Nuclear power Plants C3 and C4, 1410 MW from Terbela-4 and 969 MW from Neelum-Jehlum project and on top of that system will also be getting 525 MW of electricity from Nandipur power project when it starts running on gas by April 2017. Over 300 MW would also be injected in the system through wind and solar plants.

Mentioning the Neelum Jehlum project he said that it has been problematic till the recent past, but now it is going to come up with some fruits. Now the first turbine will come on stream in March 2018 and it will be fully operational by June 2018.

And the Guddu power plant which was generating 500 MW two years back, increased its generation up to 1100 MW in last year and has now further increased its output up to 1500 MW in result of rehabilitation of the power units at Guddu. From April 2017, Guddu will start adding its generation of 1500 MW in the system when gas is to be available. About Nandipur power plant, Mr Dagha said that it is currently running on furnace oil and adding 425 MW of electricity. Furnace Oil Treatment Plant (FOTP) has successfully been upgraded owing to which Nandipur is generating electricity up to the mark.

To a question he said that management of the plant will again submit the petition seeking increase in O&M cost and IDC (interest during cost) till the completion of the project. “We have managed two international competitive biddings (ICBs) for outsourcing the operation and maintenance of the Nandipur power plant, but the rate that we have received is somewhat higher than the rate allowed in the tariff by Nepra,” secretary water and power disclosed.

He argued that keeping in view the two ICBs, the tariff petition will be submitted with Nepra seeking the increase in the tariff in the head of O&M cost.  On account of absence of the required tariff, Nandipur runs into loss. However, it will start generating 525 MW when it has gas as fuel by April 2017 and will turn into profitable entity as the tariff on gas given by Nepra is acceptable.

He said that the reliance in achieving the electricity generation target till March 2018 has been on non-CPEC projects as only two CPEC projects of coal based Sahiwal and Port Qasim will have their input of 2640MW in 9000 MW generation target. However, in the second phase there will many CPEC projects in power sector which will be completed by up to 2022.