LAHORE: The power demand-supply gap widened on Sunday to 8,500 megawatt as power generation at hydel, thermal and IPP units dropped to the lowest level in June. Scheduled and unscheduled power outages were witnessed, lasting up to 18 hours in majority of urban areas, especially in Punjab, and 20 hours in most rural areas.

Fierce protests were witnessed in most cities and towns across the country, especially Punjab. People complained that the power supply was not enoguh to even recharge their power back-up units.

Spokesperson for the National Transmission and Dispatch Company Ltd Col (retd) Rana Sajjad Ahmad Khan told this correspondent that the gap between power generation and demand widened to 7,333MW on Sunday as the position of fuel oil stocks in all plants became critical.

According to sources, the shortfall has surged to as much as 8,500MW.

The NTDC spokesperson said several power generation units had closed down because of the non-supply of fuel. They include Kapco 876MW, Orient 213MW, Hubco 300MW, AES-Lalpir 350MW, Saif Power 210MW, Saphire 209MW, and Halmore 207MW.

He said the IPPs' production dropped from 5,800MW to 4,643MW because of circular debt and low fuel supply.

Hydel generation had also been hit, dropping to 4,252MW from 6,500MW, because of low water inflows in rivers at Tarbela and Mangla dams against figures for last year.

Col (retd) Rana did not say if and when there would be any respite for industrial, commercial, agriculture sectors and millions of domestic consumers from massive power shortages.