LAHORE - Power consumers are under the grip of more than 16 hours loadshedding across the country as gap between electricity demand and supply widened due to decrease in hydel generation and unavailability of fuel for thermal power plants.
Hydel generation is hovering around 3,760MW, about 1,500MW below from the last year’s generation on these days, and the government owned generation companies (GENCOs) are producing mere 1,366MW, about 40 percent of their total capacity. The officials believe the existing gap of 6,000MW between the demand and the supply could be brought down at 3,500MW with the improvement at two sides.
According to the Thursday’s water report, the water inflows and outflows at two major dams of the country are almost same. At Tarbella, the inflows are 45,400 cusecs and outflows are 44,700 cusecs while at Mangla the outflows are 43800 cusecs against the inflows 41,300 cusecs.
“Water releases will improve in coming days as snow starts melting at glaciers due to increase in temperature,” said an official of Lahore Met Office. Wapda officials also expect that better hydrology would add more than 1,000MW in coming days. “The government should ensure smooth supply of oil and gas to bring improvement in thermal generation,” said an official, adding the loadshedding duration can be decreased by six to eight hours with the improvement in oil supply to power plants.
Amid the prevailing power crisis, National Transmission and Despatch Company Limited (NTDCL) has stated that more than 600 MW power generation had been brought back to the national grid due to improvement in gas and oil supply to the power plants during the last one day.