ISLAMABAD: National Power Control Centre (NPCC) - an arm of National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) - on Tuesday gave tough time to National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) for allegedly presenting "inaccurate" calculations of power generation from furnace oil in July 2020.
This situation was witnessed at a public hearing held on a tariff increase at the request of Central Power Purchasing Agency- Guaranteed (CPPA-G), presided over by Engineer Bahadar Shah (Member KP). Saif Ullah Chattha (member Punjab) joined the meeting on video link while Rafique Ahmad Shaikh, (member Sindh) and Rehmat Ullah Baloch (member) Balochistan were present in the hearing hall.
Nepra agreed to increase power tariff by Paisa 84 under monthly fuel price adjustment for July, subject to an analysis of generation data of furnace oil fired power plants in July 2020. The financial impact of proposed increase has been calculated at Rs 12 billion.
During the course of hearing, Khawar of Nepra claimed that the regulator has gone through the hourly generation data of furnace-fired power plants and found that NPCC could have avoided 43 per cent of furnace oil generation by running efficient power plants on RLNG, gas and coal which were not properly utilized.
"Extra financial impact of selected sample has been calculated at Rs 129.56 million for the month of July, 2020," he said.
Member Sindh, Rafique Ahmad Shaikh said that reports indicate that there was no agreement between the NTDC and CPPA-G.
Saif Ullah Chattha, Vice Chairman, proposed that the views of CPPA-G should also be obtained on this issue. He also appreciated NTDC for bringing an improvement in the system.
The representative of CPPA-G said that this issue was purely related to NPCC, adding that the latter still has issues in 132 KV and 220 KV. He suggested that NPCC should be in a better position to explain its position in accordance with grid code. He further stated that an agreement between CPPA-G and NTDC was in a draft form, which is expected to be finalized in a month.
He maintained that if there was a grid failure or negligence, then action can be taken against NTDC/NPCC. However, such violation has never been proved in the past.
Muhammad Ayub, General Manager, NPCC, said that Nepra's analysis is totally inaccurate, suggesting that Nepra should hire experts who have exposure to system operations.
He argued that the reference is totally based on wrong figures, adding that if reference value of 2016 was taken to analyze system variations, it would be incorrect.
He said, in Nepra's reference, generated energy was 13,512 GWh whereas actual energy was 14,433 GWh, adding that a difference of 1200 GWh is evident in these figures.
He said, when more energy is generated, more resources would be utilized and argued that after 19000 MW benchmark, furnace oil-fired power plants are allowed to be run based on their merit.
The arguments of Ayub irritated Nepra members, who appeared to have sided with Nepra's official who was under fire for inaccurate calculations. He said efforts are being made to improve the system, adding that all relevant data was being shared with Nepra.
Another official of NTDC said that installed capacity was 36166MW whereas dependable capacity was 32000. He said, "power generation on 500 KV were of 17000 MW capacity whereas on 220 KV, 8000 MW plus and on 132 KV 7800 MW".
He also said that plants of 2500 MW are on forced outages due to different reasons, whereas plants of 3787 MW were not being run despite being less expensive.
An official statement says that the Authority conducted a public hearing on fuel price adjustment for July 2020 in the matter of Discos. The Authority after hearing the arguments of stakeholders has reserved its judgment in the matter. The decision will be issued after carrying out an analysis with regard to the statements made by NPCC during the course of the hearing. Hence, on Tuesday, no decision of the Authority on this matter has been made.-
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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