660MW Lucky electric coal-fired plant: Rs 750 million foreign financing for evacuation of power to be arranged

The government will arrange Rs 750 million foreign financing for "Evacuation of Power from 660 MW Lucky Electric Coal Fired Plant at Port Qasim" project. The project has been approved at the cost of Rs 1.315 billion, in which Rs 454 million would be financed through domestic resources, official documents of the project indicated.
Apart from the foreign and domestic financing, Rs 110.14 million worth of duty is also part of the total cost of the project. National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC) will finance the local component of the project through its own resources.
The objective of project is interconnection of 660 MW Lucky Electric Coal Fired Power Plant near Power Qasim with the National Grid System for transfer of power to upcountry load centers by construction of 500 kV double circuit transmission line.
According to the documents, the transmission system of the country is overloaded and not capable of coping with the increasing power demand. In near future thousands of megawatts addition in the system would result in frequent tripping and heavy breakdowns. Resultantly, enhancement in transmission and transformation capacity of NTDC system is required.
As part of the sector strategy, the government wants to provide reliable, uninterrupted power to its consumers. Keeping in view the present overloaded system and increasing availability of additional power generation capacity in near future coupled with hefty power demand. The strategy has been adopted to strengthen and enhance the capacity of transmission system.
Documents showed that the project will lead to improve voltage profile, system reliability of network and dispersal of power coming from the project. Documents disclosed that major issues faced during execution of previous projects were land acquisition and right of way problems. In this regards efforts will be made to resolve these issues in minimum possible time to avoid any delay in project execution, official documents said.