Govt admits up to seven hours of power outages

ISLAMABAD: Power Minister Awais Leghari on Thursday confirmed six to seven hours of load management — almost three times higher than the government’s public commitment — citing a sudden surge in demand, non-availability of imported gas and lower water discharges for irrigation.

Speaking at a news conference, the minister said power shortfalls had been caused by disruptions to LNG imports due to the Middle East crisis and by lower provincial irrigation water requirements, both of which he said were beyond the government’s control. However, he insisted that the government was making every possible effort to minimise both outages and potential tariff increases arising from the use of expensive alternative fuels.

In this regard, he said the government had even postponed maintenance of nuclear power plants for a few weeks, with no scheduled shutdowns until July. He added that all available resources had been mobilised, including diplomatic channels, to secure fuel supplies through alternative LNG sourcing and diversion of local gas, while ensuring adequate availability for fertiliser production.

The minister said the country also witnessed unusual fluctuations in demand this month due to weather conditions, with the lowest demand of 9,000MW on April 9 and a peak of 20,000MW six days later, on April 15.

He said the situation would slightly improve in a day as discharges from dams had been increased by 15,000 cusecs to 25,000 cusecs, which would help enhance hydropower generation.

On the other side of the equation, hydropower sou­rces provided 3,200MW and 3,000MW from liquefied natural gas imports, leading to minuscule generation from furnace oil because it had a significant fuel-cost impact.

This year, however, all LNG-based plants with a capacity of 6,000MW remain mostly idle due to LNG import disruptions caused by the Middle East war. While LNG-based plants provide no more than 500MW and that too on local gas, hydropower supply also stood at 1,600MW, because of recent rains that replaced water discharges from dams for irrigation.

This meant, he claimed, that there would have been no power shortfall if LNG-based and hydropower plants had been operating, as the current shortfall was around 3,400MW.

“Every 500-600MW sho­rtfall translates into one-hour load management and therefore the government was forced to have six to seven hours of average load management without any discrimination between urban and rural areas,” he said, adding that the load management schedule was equitable.

He claimed that there was no load management during the daytime, when demand generally remained low and there was sufficient generation capacity available. He appealed to consumers to conserve power to sail through an international crisis. He added that despite shortcomings at present, Pakistan’s diverse energy sources like coal, solar, wind, nuclear and others are also a strength, which provides resilience in times of crisis, otherwise, the situation would have been even worse than at present.

Mr Leghari said the early market closures enforced by the government had also helped shave about 1,200-1,400MW peak demand; otherwise, the load management would have been higher by another two hours.

The minister did not agree with a questioner that LNG from Qatar may not be available for the next three years and claimed that some supplies were possible by mid-May.

He said spot purchases were not possible at the moment because of the war’s impact and unaffordable prices, as imports of petrol and diesel were already facing foreign exchange constraints due to higher import prices.

He conceded that cheaper and greater generation capacity in the south could not be utilised in the north for some transmission constraints as well as system stability issues arising out of the non-availability of LNG-based generation capacity in the mid-country and that was why there was no load management in Karachi and Hyderabad power supply areas, except some economic load management by K-Electric in high-loss areas.

With these load management efforts, the minister said the positive fuel cost adjustment next month would be around Rs1.3 per unit, compared to Rs1.8 per unit a couple of months ago; otherwise, fuel costs would have risen significantly with full utilisation of furnace oil- and diesel-based plants.

He took responsibility for consumers’ suffering but said the challenges were caused by a war in the neighbourhood and lower water requirements for irrigation. “If the public is facing any inconveniences due to us not providing electricity at night and during peak hours, I am directly answerable and apologise,” he said, but insisted that the circumstances were beyond the government’s control.

The minister explained that power demand beyond 16,500MW required load management in the absence of gas availability. “A shortfall occurs when the demand goes beyond 16,500MW after the consumption of every fuel resource in Pakistan — imported coal, local coal, nuclear, hydropower and solar power. And then in the evening, the load shedding hours have to be increased as per the requirements,” he said.