It is official. K-Electric will shed the load for all and sundry, at least for now. Not that the citizens will now go through something they have not been going through for the past ten days. Only that it is now official.
And this is what has been the most surprising factor in the whole KE, Ramadan and heat wave debate. Almost the entire city, at one point or another, has faced long hours without power, only to hear the utility's CEO letting them know that 99 percent of feeders were working properly.
Mind you, commercial consumption has not even peaked yet. But expect the Sindh government to take care of that, as shops are supposed to shut by 9 PM.
Power disruption from Kanupp power plant, coupled with demand soaring above 3,000MW, now means that previously (officially) loadshedding exempt areas will also face at least three hours a day of power outage.
Another three or thirteen hours without power that may come along, could be overload, feeder tripping, transformer replacement or any such technical jargon, but do not confuse it with loadshedding. That is what the KE management wants you to believe.
KEs internal generation capacity stands at 2,247MW. Add the controversial 650MW from the national grid and another 366MW from IPPs - and you have a capacity of over 3,200MW. KE, when accused of not been able to add enough megawatts in so many years, has been swift to respond saying over 1000MW have been added since 2009.
For sure, KE has added megawatts, but the reality lies somewhere in the middle. The net addition is just 562MW, according to KEs own documents. While the utility has got its fair share of applause and at times an unfair share of criticism, surely this addition is quite unsatisfactory. No wonder, the dependence on NTDCs 650MW magnifies, as KEs internal generation is often compromised due to various fuel availability or cost issues.
These substantiations concerns rose from certain quarters that the management is pretty satisfied with the state of affairs. Most indicators have improved in the past six years, from transmission loss to theft and technical issues. The financials have resultantly improved. There may well be complacency as the company is now making decent profits, and that too according to some criticism, is enough for KE to stop worrying about anything else.
That said, it is unfortunate to see the whole debate moving in the direction of privatization and its effectiveness. There is little doubt that KE, since privatization, has set benchmarks for the industry, improved performance metrics and now runs profitably. The focus of the debate should be the role of the regulator. Privatized entities cannot be dictated, but they can't be allowed to work against the larger interest.