Governance in Discos: cabinet tells Power Division to prepare plan

The federal cabinet has directed the Power Division to prepare a comprehensive plan to improve governance in the power sector, especially power Distribution Companies (Discos) through induction of experienced professionals, well-informed sources in the Power Division told Business Recorder. These directions were issued by the cabinet in its meeting held on March 6, 2018 on a presentation of Power Division on projections for electricity generation and extent of loadshedding in the country.
The cabinet was informed that 2017 had proved more difficult than expected due to unseasonal high temperatures, record hydel power generation shortfall, as well as delay in the commissioning of 3 RLNG plants, Neelum-Jhelum and Tarbela-IV The sources said, both the average and peak demand of March to October, 2018 were shared with the cabinet. These available supply assumptions were based on hydel generation projected on the basis of five year historical data, scheduled outages of power generation plants for the purpose of maintenance, but did not include expected generation from new units, ie, Neelum Jhelum, Tarbela IV and three RLNG plants whose combined generation would be zero in March, 2242 MW in April and 3000 MW from May onwards.
It was pointed out that the new hydel generation units would start producing electricity and would add 144 MW in April, which would go up to 141 MW in August. According to power sector regulator, ie, Nepra, and JICA there will be shortfall of few hundred megawatts even in 2018 but a consultant hired by the government through employing different methodologies proved that there would be surplus of a few hundred megawatts in 2018.
The cabinet was further informed that the expected average demand growth given by the Discos through National Power Control Centre (NPCC) which ranges from 10 to 13 per cent compared to the actual average demand in 2017 and @ 5 per cent and 7 per cent on the actual demand of 2017 showed different levels of shortfall/surplus during March-October, 2018. For peak hours, the shortfall would be managed through utilizing pondage to coincide with peak demand.
Based on this review of supply/demand projection, the new load management plan was presented before the cabinet. It was pointed out that feeders belonging to category 1 covering 14.92 million or 60.72 per cent consumers across the country would have no load shedding, while feeders falling in category II, where losses between 10-20 per cent and covered 21.7 per cent of consumers in both urban and rural areas, would have load shedding of between 2-4 hours.
It was highlighted that discrimination between the urban and rural areas had been done away with. During the course of discussion, it was mentioned that the incumbent government had resolved serious challenges pertaining to electricity generation and focus should now be on improving governance of Discos, where sound and experienced professionals should be hired to manage them properly. Power Division should prepare a governance plan to improve the sector's performance.
The second challenge was the carrying capacity or transmission or generated electricity, which had been a hurdle in removing the menace of load shedding. "There is a need to determine how much load the system can absorb and what steps are to be taken to improve it further," the sources quoted one cabinet member as saying.
It was highlighted that the government should take all possible steps to ensure uninterrupted supply of electricity during Sehr and Iftar times. For this, it was important that Discos had sufficient supply of backup transformers because their breakdown was a major cause of load shedding.