The total financial impact of this increase has been calculated at Rs 24.6 billion and is expected to be notified before August 9, 2019 so that the impact of August is not coupled with July's raise. This raise will not have any impact on KE consumers, lifeline consumers and agriculture consumers.
The decision was taken at a public hearing presided over by newly appointed Chairman Nepra Tauseef H Farooqi who appeared to be unaware of many technical abbreviations like annual shutdown. Member Sindh, Rafique Ahmed Shaikh, Member Balochistan, Rehmatullah Baloch and Member KP, Engineer Bahar Shah were also seen active unlike in the past. The Central Power Purchasing Agency- Guaranteed (CPPA-G), in its petition had sought an increase of Rs 1.92 per unit for July.
The Nepra's technical team stated that if expensive furnace oil plants were not run, the impact of Rs 5.6 billion would not have been passed on to the consumers. The total unnecessary burden which will be passed on to the consumers will be around Rs 5.9 billion or Rs 0.43 per unit.
In July 2019, the share of hydel generation was 32.53 per cent followed by coal with 14.33 per cent. The share of power generation from natural gas was 11.81 per cent and RLNG 24.71 per cent while generation from furnace-oil was 5.50 per cent.
Nepra's officials argued that consumers could have been provided relief provided coal and RLNG-fired plants of better efficiency were operated instead of finance oil -based plants.
Chairman Nepra directed NPCC to provide capacity details of Kot Addu Power Plant as NPCC ran many inefficient plants in July. He also directed NPCC and CPPA to share details of their constraints so that these issues are sorted out.
Muhammad Ayub, General Manager, National Power Control Centre (NPCC) explained that power Distribution Companies are facing constraints including low voltage due to which they are unable to transmit over and above 23000MW of electricity.
"Nepra should be given the details of constraints so that all the stakeholders sit together and resolve issues so that consumers are not overburdened. We have to save each penny of the consumers," said the Chairman.
He also inquired whether NPCC is following economic merit order which provides basis for running of power plants. GM, NPCC said that economic merit order is one of the components to running the power plants. He added that sometimes NPCC runs expensive power plants due to their location and wind power is unreliable due to which NPCC has to keep some plants operational at low level to meet emergent requirements.
Most of the members raised their concern on use of expensive power plants and asked NPCC, NTDC, and other stakeholders to share their suggestions with Nepra as the regulator wants to do away with system constraints. Nepra also sought justification for the under- utilization of efficient power plants.
