In a country where the power demand is low in winters while the generation capacity is higher than the peak summer load, it is absurd to have 8-10 hours load shedding in the north, during winters. But that is the reality in Pakistan, today. And now virtually, all winters have problems – following countrywide power blackout episodes in January 2021 and January 2023, and now massive load-shedding in January 2024.
There are multiple reasons for the current load shedding such as lack of hydel availability, dollar shortage, which constrains reliance on expensive fuel and growing pollution (smog). The story does not end here. The core of the issue is poor planning and lack of investment in transmission systems.
In Pakistan, 80 percent of the load is north of Guddu while the cheaper base load fuel options (such as nuclear K2 and K3) are installed in south while the expensive fuel plants are installed in North (such as RLNG and FO plants).
In winters, when the overall power demand is significantly lower, the system voltage increases on lightly loaded long 500 kV transmission lines, and that makes them vulnerable to tripping under dense fog (smog) conditions. Moreover, due to old switchgear at different transmission interfaces, the issue can cascade and result in power blackouts, as this has happened twice in the last three years. Hence, to avoid this, the power transfer from South to North is curtailed. Thus, due to power transfer limitation, nuclear plants (K2 and K3) are being run undercapacity.
However, there are still enough options in the north (apart from hydel) to meet the low winter demand. But they come low on merit order, and to run some of this fuel must be imported which requires dollars that the country doesn’t have. And then the preference of supplying imported RLNG is through pipelines to households, as domestic gas is short.
One option could be to use furnace oil based plants, as FO is now mostly domestically produced. However, FO plants are old and inefficient, and at the prescribed price are not feasible to run. However, the country is exporting FO at 25-30 percent discount to local prices, as refineries must get rid of FO which is residual fuel in our age-old refineries. A logical response could be to lower the price of FO to make the power generation on FO based plants cheap, and that to avoid load shedding without importing fuel or making power expensive. However, it is not happening – a planning and coordination failure.
The bigger problem is that the power generation planning was done in haste in the last decade, as ideally K2 and K3 should have been installed in north and there should not be any imported coal when Thar coal based power generation was coming, and the investment should have been diverted on the transmission system to ensure no hiccups such as the ones we are facing almost every winter, especially in January.
The government cannot be exonerated by insisting that hydel availability is limited (around 500-600 MW is available out of 10,000MW network), as it is a recurring problem every winter when canals are closed. The government cannot pass the buck on expensive RLNG, as winter is global peak season, and spot cargoes are expensive, and the gas demand is at peak. And the government cannot simply blame fog and smog – which happens every winter.
Government must plan and execute steps to ensure no more load shedding in winters. There are numerous interfaces and nodes on transmission lines from South to North. They function fine in summers, as power transfer is being consumed (mostly in south Punjab), but in winters, even up north consumers rely on these (as hydel is low) where transmission line constraints become a problem, as longer the path for power transfer, higher are the chances of breakdown.
The problem could not have been created had the base load generation had been installed in the North. Now the problem has been created, there is also a solution. The need is to build more transmission lines, and to upgrade/adequately maintain the existing lines, substations, and critical interfaces. The existing lines should be upgraded to cater for the fog and new lines should be built on newer environmental realities. There should be better insulation.
The other problem is the lack of human resources available for NTDC and discos which exacerbates the problem. The problems are not new, and solutions are known to all. The question is about the will and capability of the power sector to solve. Now, SIFC is committed to resolving this, let’s wait for January 2025 to find out.
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