There are certainly plenty of mega-watts to go around after the PML-N government’s tenure. But extensive load-shedding shows that in fact they aren’t going anywhere. The primary reason being that Pakistan’s dilapidated transmission sector is unable to carry all those mega-watts of newly installed capacity.
According to most experts, the transmission grid can handle anywhere from 20-22 thousand megawatts. However, according to figures given by the NTDC in the most recent Nepra State of Industry Report 2017, peak demand for FY18 is 25,227MW. This peak demand is set to increase to almost 30,000MW by 2022.
However, the pace of transmission projects is nowhere near the pace of generation additions. Even the state of the current transmission network is mostly overloaded.
According to the SOI 2017, almost 40 percent of the transformers at 500/220 kV level are loaded above 80 percent of their rated capacity. The situation is even worse for the 220/132 kV transformers, with 55 percent being overloaded in the system.
The power sector regulator also noted that the total duration of planned outages increased in FY17 as compared to the previous year for both 500kV and 220kV levels. Nepra has also lambasted the NTDC in previous years for the inability of the latter to complete crucial transmission projects on time.
This tardiness has cost the exchequer billions of rupees in wasted energy that cannot be evacuated.
Some glaring examples include the failure to construct interconnection facilities for the 400MW Uch-II and 747MW Guddu power plant for more than four years. The Uch plant is a gas based plant which ranks high on the merit order efficiency list but was only run on interim arrangement.
Capacity payments are still paid to the underutilized power plants while the delays in project execution also incur cost escalation to the tune of billions of rupees. Then there is also the commitment charges paid to the lender. According to Nepra, the NTDC was required to pay Rs5 billion as additional commitment charges which basically waste the benefits of soft loans due to the organisation’s lack of management skills and poor governance.
The performance of the grid on technical parameters also remained unimpressive. The system duration of interruption showed a 2.35 times (135 percent) increase in average outage duration per interconnection point as compared to the previous year. Similarly the system frequency of interruption also saw indicates 1.84 times (84.2%) increase in average number of outages per circuit as compared to the preceding year.
For the new government, the priority should be on overhauling the transmission network to allow maximum energy to be delivered while the DISCOs should be privatised at best to increase the amount of energy sold. The mega-watts are there but the financial and operational health of the power sector depends on these two crucial links now.