1,500-2,000 megawatts shortfall likely in winter: Pepco can manage by restricting daily loadshedding to 3-4 hours

Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) senior officials have expressed their apprehensions that there would be prolonged power loadshedding from December 26, 2010 due to irrigation canals' annual closure and shortage of gas supply to the Independent Power Producers. Talking to Business Recorder here on Thursday PEPCO officials who wished not to be named said.
"PEPCO has made all possible arrangements to off-set effects of the reduced production of hydel power generation units of Tarbela dam, Ghazi Barotha and Mangla dam owing to lesser water discharges from the two major dams of the country." They said PEPCO's hydel powerhouses, thermal units, Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Rental Power Plants (RPPs) have total power generation capacity of 19000MW, out of which hydel units contribute 6,500MW electricity during monsoon season when river are in full flows.
Officials said during the month long closure of irrigation canals across the country for desilting purpose, Indus River System Authority and the provinces have agreed to release 20,000 cusecs water from the Tarbela dam and 10,000 cusecs water from the Mangla dam.
They said with these water releases PEPCO would be able to generate at least 2,000MW electricity as compared to last year's 900MW. Whereas the power producing and distributing company has added 1200 additional megawatt electricity in its system recently. They said keeping in view the inevitable decrease in hydel power generation, PEPCO has made all arrangements like provision of furnace oil to run its thermal power plants, IPPs and RPPs to their full capacity of 12,500MW in the month of January and afterwards to meet industrial, commercial and domestic consumers with minimum possible outages.
They said if all goes well according to schedule, there would not be a shortfall of more than 1500 to 2000MW in the winter which could be managed by load management of maximum 3 to 4 hours loadshedding since there is also less demand of at least 4,000MW electricity during winter as compared to the summer season in the country.
About the power position of 23rd December 2010, PEPCO officials said that 11,365MW electricity was produced against the demand of 11,492 with a shortfall of only 127MW. PEPCO's hydel power units generated 5060MW, thermal 1,324MW, IPPs 4919MW and RPPs 62MW. PEPCO provided 700MW electricity to KESC out of its national grid system.