The National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) has enhanced its transmission capacity by 6,120 minimum vectoring altitude at a cost of Rs 29,045 million by completing its projects during 2013-15. Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali, who made the announcement in a press conference held at the Water and Power Development Authority''s House on Saturday, said: "The capacity to transmit and despatch power on the NTDC system has increased to 273,00 minimum vectoring altitude now from 21,180 minimum vectoring altitude in 2013-14."
The company is the only transmission and a despatch company to help all power generation plants, load centres and power distribution companies. It is also connected with the K-Electric to export power from the centre to Karachi. The minister also said the company had completed one 500kv and nine 220kv grid stations besides 13 500kv and 36 grid stations of 220kv. "The total length of 500kv and 220kv transmission lines is 5,072 kilometres and 9631 kilometres, respectively," he added.
The grid stations are included the 500kv grid station Dera Ghazi Khan, 220kv grid station Khuzdar, 220kv grid station GIS Bandala, 220kv grid station Okara, 220kv grid station Toba Tek Singh, 220kv grid station Kassowal, 220kv temporary grid station Ghazi Road Lahore, 220kv grid station Rohri and AIS220kv grid station Loralai. He said the completion of transmission lines would also be helpful in despatch of 21,000 megawatts of electricity on the system by 2017 and that the transmission was quite dilapidated when the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz took over two years ago. "The capacity to hold a huge generation on the transmission line was a challenge. Therefore, we decided to invest on it for smooth transmission of electricity ahead," he added.
About the privatisation of power distribution companies, he said the Privatisation Commission was working on it and he had no details about it. When pointed out that the textile industry was critic of his ministry for burdening the industry by Rs 4 per unit, he said the tariff was determined by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority and everyone was provided with equal chance to agitate its viewpoint before this authority.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2015

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