Govt to improve power transmission system to 26,000MWs in a year

Islamabad : Ministry of Energy (Power Division) on Tuesday informed a parliamentary panel that the government is working on improvement and development of the power transmission system and by next year, it would enhance power transmission capacity by 3000 MWs touching the highest capacity of 26000 MWs.

During the ongoing summer average 21000 MW electricity was transmitted by the system with the highest load of 23000 MW, as this year too, the government added 3000MW capacity in transmission system. By next summer, the capacity would be enhanced to 26,000 MWs; Secretary Power Division Irfan Ali said this while briefing the Senate Standing Committee on Power.

The committee met here with Senator Fida Muhammad in the chair discussed the installed and peak season generation of hydroelectricity along with details of all power stations in the country.

Total hydel Wapda installed capacity is 9387 MW and independent power producers (IPPs) hydle capacity is 382 MW. The average daily hydle generation was told to be 5191 MW of Wapda and 252 MW of IPPs with maximum generation reaching 5,732 MW and 302 MW respectively.

It baffled the committee members when they come to know that one major transformer of Mangla Power Generation system has been out of order for last six months due to which the country is losing around 400-500 MW of power.

However, the committee was told that some power generating turbines are been turned off due to maintenance work which resulting in decreased capacity from some units in Tarbela but they have been repaired now. The committee was also informed that power generation depends highly on the level of water release indent given by IRSA because power generation is a by-product of the release of water.

Members of the committee observed the units that produce cheapest electricity should be running at highest possible efficiency and the scheduled maintenance should not come in the peak power usage time. The committee decided that this discussion will be more fruitful if the Ministry of Water, Wapda and IRSA are also present in the next meeting.

The committee also took briefing from K-Electric on overbilling and unscheduled loadshedding as reported in print and electronic media.

It was told that K-electric has 29 business centres across the city and the company is reachable to any and all customers through running widespread customer complaint call centres. The K-Electric representative told that illegal hook connections in huge numbers have been removed and there the power distribution has been made through installation of Aerial Bundled Cables (ABC), which cannot be hooked.

The committee was told that all billing is done according to Nepra guidelines and the system has a strong checking mechanism. He said that customer and Nepra complaints have decreased over time.

Secretary Power told the committee that rest of the Pakistan is also following this and slowly the system is changing to ABC transformers. The committee decided to have information from all DISCOs as in how much time period DISCOs can have ABC transformers in especially high loss areas.

The committee members while discussing electricity theft called for a quantitative collection and study of data about the highest method of domestic and commercial theft and bring a well-researched proposal of whether the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) meters are the solution or ABC meters. The committee asked the ministry to have a single agenda meeting on what systematic changes are being proposed and done in the power sector.

The meeting was attended among others by Leader of the House Syed Shibli Faraz, Senators Nauman Wazir Khattak, Agha Shahzeb Durrani, Dilawar Khan, Muhammad Akram, Secretary Power, Chief Managing Operations K-Electric, MD PESCO and officials from the ministry and attached bodies.