The state of the transmission and distribution sector saw little improvement in the past year. The government chose to focus its efforts on increasing generation whereas a better approach would have been to take a holistic perspective of the entire power sector supply chain. To increase generation without having the necessary transmission and distribution capability is characteristic of the mis-governance that has engulfed the sector.
The recently released NEPRA State of Industry Report 2016 confirmed the poor state of the DISCOs in the past year. For starters, the transmission and distribution losses (T&D) for the majority of DISCOs with the exception of TESCO and IESCO failed to meet targets. DISCOs were allowed 15.23 percent overall average losses by regulator whereas their actual losses were almost 18 percent.
To make matters worse, overloading of DISCOs combined with other constraints of the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) resulted in DISCOs unable to draw power despite allocation.
NEPRA notes that except for IESCO, where overloading of 11 kV feeders was around 12 percent, other DISCOs had more than 20 percent overloaded feeders. PESCO and MEPCO had more than 40% feeders overloaded, whereas in LESCO were loaded above 80 percent. On a country-wide basis about 32 percent of 11 kV feeders were found to be loaded above the acceptable level.
Effectively, this drives in the point that without the proper investment required to overcoming the constraints of DISCOs there will be no benefit of increasing power generation. On the contrary it will result in massive losses to the national exchequer ultimately borne by the end consumer.
The regulator has pointed out the need for a free hand to be given to the DISCOs so that they may plan and invest according to the required distribution capacity. NEPRA is moving towards a multiyear tariff regime to encourage pro-active investment and predictability of funding needs for DISCOs.
The present government has made no progress on its promise of privatisation of DISCOs which remains elusive after four years. Due to constraints of DISCOs and the transmission network almost 3000 MW of power is lost during peak demand months. Unless the government tackles the power crisis by allocating equal resources in a planned manner to the entire power sector supply chain, it is unlikely load shedding will end anytime soon.
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