But as the wrath of the summer of 2017 sets in, all these initiatives of the government were put to the test. The ground realities reveal that the desired results, in spite of the government's best efforts, could not be achieved and power shortage and load shedding come out to be the same as those of May 2013, if not more. Things did not work out well and the state's energy planners need to analysis with an open mind as to what went wrong.
It is reported that the minister of water and power, Khawaja Asif, told the National Assembly on Wednesday that the scheduled maintenance at a number of power plants had deprived the national grid of 2,200 megawatts, which resulted in up to 12 hours of load shedding in many parts of the country.
Responding to a calling attention notice, he blamed the rising temperatures in April on an "unexpected" 2,700MW surge in demand, leading to a shortfall of nearly 5,000MW.
The minister said the plants which were shut down for maintenance should have come on-line in March, ahead of the summer months. He said the plants currently closed for maintenance will all be on-line by the end of April or early May. "A new plant is being inaugurated in Bhikki today and [over 700MW of electricity] will flow into the system without interruptions. Aside from this, new electricity will be added to the system and we will regain control of this crisis," he said.
Once that happened, Khawaja Asif claimed, the original schedule for load shedding would be resumed and no forced or unscheduled outages would occur. "I'm saying that plants were closed for maintenance. It is our fault that we did not do this earlier and they should have been on-line in April."
He told the house that 6,400MW from the new projects would be added to the national grid before the end of the year. Peak shortfall stood at 5,200MW, so it was expected that the difference would be squared off by December. "In addition to the 6,400MW coming on-line this year, 2,500-3,000MW will be available next year, Neelum-Jhelum and Tarbela-4 in February 2018, Nandipur will start producing 525MW in May, three LNG [plants] in Bhikki, Haveli, Bahadur Shah and Balloki will yield 3,600MW, [two] Sahiwal coal plants will produce 600MW, wind power will yield 400MW and solar energy will give us 435MW. Chashma-4 will be on-line by next month and yield 315MW," he said, providing an overview of power projects in the pipeline.
The water and power secretary had earlier predicted that electricity outages would not exceed four hours a day across the country the during the warmer months from April to September this year, but the fact is that load shedding has gone up to 16 hours due to the scorching heat.
Khawaja Asif said that electricity demand stood at 19,405 megawatts and production at 13,575MW, showing a shortfall of 5,830MW. Estimates a day earlier suggested that the gap between demand and supply had widened to more than 7,000MW. It is reported that the prime minister dismissed a plan of eight-hour load shedding for the industry in Ramazan. It was proposed with the objective of providing electricity without any interruption for domestic consumers during the Ramazan.
The water and power minister said that a fall in hydroelectric power generation because of water shortage in reservoirs would aggravate the situation and a rise in temperature would further increase the demand for electricity. He suggested that the Ministry of Water and Power should co-ordinate with the Meteorological Office in order to frame a proper load management plan for the summer. According to him, around 4,400MW had been added to the system since 2013.
On Wednesday, the electricity shortfall ranged from 7,000 to 8,500 megawatts, which resulted in an average load shedding of almost 12 hours. This was significantly higher than 5,800MW of the shortfall claimed by Khawaja Asif in his midday tweets when he put the demand at 19,405MW and generation at 13,575MW. The minister confirmed that 2,200MW of power projects were shut down while around 2,700MW of additional demand had developed due to the expected surge in temperature.
The given figures and reasons do not tally, nor come out well amid confusion and loss of direction as to how to manage the power crises. Each government functionary is at his own tangent while the prime minister, with all his determination and sincere efforts to provide the people with quality power, remains frustrated and disappointed.
In May 2013, the installed power was over 19,000MW and available power at around 13000MW, which is more or less the case in April 2017. There is a big question mark over the impact of the 4,400MW added to the grid from 2013 to date as reported by government functionaries and its contribution in arresting the load shedding and providing relief to the people. Load shedding is at least at the level of in May of 2013.
Government planners need to sit back and truly analyze and identify the realities of what went wrong, where the issue are and what needs to be done. And they accordingly and sincerely present the realities and facts to the prime minister, who no doubt is most sincere and is committed to end load shedding in the country. The issue of load shedding in the country is far more complex than installation of more power plants. This is the easiest task to be done and the government has done much of it in its four years of governance. The issue today is not the generation capacity but the availability of power on the grid and the financial and technical capacity to evacuate this power and efficiently transmit it to the consumers. This figure stands at a pathetic 13,500MW.
The power supply chain is a complex combination of the technical and financial dynamics governing this sector. On the technical side, it includes the efficiency of the power plants in the public sector, the conduct of the IPPs, the efficiency and generated power evacuation capacity of the transmission and distribution network, the technical and commercial line losses inclusive of power thefts at all levels.
For many years, power-generation plants in the public sector are operating at a de-rated capacity owning to lack of upgrades and maintenance, on account of which many of them stay out of grid or supply power unaffordable to the government. The operations of the IPPs demand an audit. Line losses continue to be hovering around 18 percent. There is a mismatch between power generation and evacuation capacities.
On the financial side, it's one of the mounting receivables, subsidies and the impact of the circular debt, all of which limit government capacity to finance and evacuate power from the power plants. "The entire subsidy earmarked for electricity consumers in the current fiscal year has been consumed and the power ministry has nothing to retire the debt in the energy chain," said an official aware of the development."
Over the past few days, the IPPs have been warning the government that they will invoke sovereign guarantees if their dues are not settled. At the end of January this year, the circular debt amounted to roughly Rs 370 billion, up Rs 50 billion over the past seven months, power ministry sources said.
In the previous fiscal year, subsidy payments had jumped to Rs 196.54 billion, compared to the target of Rs 137.6 billion. According to current year's budget documents, Rs 95.4 billion had been set aside for subsidising the power industry, excluding K-Electric. According to the official, receivables of Pakistan State Oil (PSO) - the state-owned oil marketing giant - had gone up to Rs 280 billion whereas the ministry of finance released only Rs 20 billion. Power producers are major defaulters, owing PSO Rs 228 billion.
The power subsidy stands at above Rs 100 billion every year and a major chunk of it is contributed by consumers themselves. They also pay over Rs 200 billion in a year due to surcharges and high-benchmark transmission and distribution losses set by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra).
The government needs to face these grave realities and come up with solutions in case it wants to effectively address the issue of load shedding. Had the government adapted this approach, how painful and demanding it was, the government would have succeeding in providing a reliable power supply to people and in the process made political mileage out of its efforts. There is still some time left for it to catch up. There are no short cuts to ending the power crisis.
(The writer is former President, Oversees Investors Chamber of Commerce & Industry)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017