ISLAMABAD: The power sector is setting new records as it has started receiving more than 30,000 tons of furnace oil a day following Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s directive last week for reducing the duration of loadshedding.
As a consequence, the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) announced on Tuesday that it had ended loadshedding across the country after the temperature declined because of widespread rains. “There was no loadshedding anywhere in the country on Tuesday as the maximum demand was met,” an official said.
He said the total demand stood at 11,100MW at 8pm (peak demand time) which was fully met. The demand went down from 17,000MW to 12,000MW because of a sudden drop in temperature over the past few days.
Independent power producers (IPPs) contributed about 5,920MW to the national grid, thermal power plants 1,500MW and hydropower resources 3,680MW.
Officials said a surprise visit by acting water and power secretary Saifullah Chattha to the Indus River System Authority last week also helped increase water discharges from water reservoirs, taking hydropower generation from 2,668MW last week to 3,680MW on Tuesday.
The power sector received a maximum of 35,980 tons of furnace oil on Tuesday. An official in the NTDC said it was the highest fuel supply to the power sector in more than four years and followed Rs20 billion disbursement to the Pakistan State Oil (PSO) whose receivables were still in excess of Rs150bn.
On Monday, the power sector received about 29,061 tons of fuel and power shortfall stood at 769MW, resulting in less than two hours of loadshedding. On Saturday, it received 32,000 tons of furnace and power shortage stood at 1,000MW. The sector got 32,161 tons last Friday.
Thermal power stations in public and private sectors require a maximum of 36,000 tons of furnace to run all plants on full capacity. However, the power sector had been receiving less than 24,000 tons of fuel over the past four years because of liquidity problems. In some cases, PSO provided less than 3,000 tons of fuel per day to the sector.
A power sector official said the sector was also getting 173 million cubic feet per day of additional gas following the prime minister’s orders, resulting in additional generation of about 800MW. This included 55mmcfd to Kapco, 28mmcfd to Kotri, 52mmcfd to Guddu and Faisalabad plants and 38mmcfd to Halmore.
Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2014.