ISLAMABAD/LAHORE: With hydroelectric power generation declining further by up to 600 megawatts, the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) is under pressure to bail out power companies as electricity outages have gone beyond an average of 10 hours a day.
According to sources, Irsa has been reducing discharges from water reservoirs for the past two days due to increasing flows in river Kabul. “This has upset the power authorities,” said the sources, adding that the Ministry of Water and Power had desired higher discharges from reservoirs to partially offset the peak energy demand.
An official said the ministry had asked Irsa to review its discharge pattern but the authority had declined to oblige because the provinces were not ready to increase their demands for irrigation at this stage.
Irsa informed the government that it would continue with the priority of building up storage at this stage as the Kabul and Chenab rivers met provincial irrigation requirements in the early part of the new cropping season.
The sources said the power shortage could increase over the coming days amid increasing temperatures in the catchment areas and resultant better flows in rivers not contributing to dams, like Kabul and Chenab.
Officials said the further cut in discharges from the two dams was expected because of improved Kabul flows and none of the provinces had any problem with the prevailing discharge pattern because their indents were being fully met.
Irsa was releasing about 47,000 cusec of water from Tarbela Dam and 50,000 cusec from Mangla two days ago when the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) produced an average of 3,200MW, with a peak of 4,000MW.
It curtailed the discharges to 35,000 cusec from Tarbela and 45,000 cusec from Mangla, thus cutting down hydropower generation by 400-500MW.
On Sunday, Irsa made another cut to 30,000 cusec from Tarbela and 38,000 cusec from Mangla.
The officials said the river Kabul flow had risen to 75,000 cusec from 50,000 cusec a couple of days ago because of a sudden increase in temperatures in its catchment areas leading to snow melting.
Likewise, river Chenab was also contributing reasonably to the irrigation system as its flow increased from 25,000 cusec to 35,000 cusec. Flows in both these rivers were expected to increase in coming days as temperatures went up, the sources said.
Meanwhile, people continued to face hardships due to frequent outages.
Both cities and villages faced loadshedding almost on an hourly basis, exceeding the power shutdown schedule of eight to 10 hours in urban and over 12 hours in rural areas.
The massive loadshedding has disrupted the routine business.
“We were expecting that the situation would be better this summer than last year but it is almost the same,” a resident of Lahore said.
According to the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC), the total power generation on Sunday morning was 11,200MW. “Since the total demand was 14,200MW, there was a shortfall of 3,000MW,” an NTDC spokesman told Dawn.
He said the situation would improve after release of the required water from Tarbela.
The spokesman expressed the hope that “Sunday’s downpour will also help in improving the situation”.