WAPDA asked consumers to restrict consumption to avoid forced loadshedding

Lahore : Ministry of Water and Power Sunday asked consumers to adopt energy conservation measures and lower energy usage as hydel power generation that remained lower in the month of September will remain as it in ongoing month also.

A spokesman of the ministry said that currently hydel power generation was decreased due to lower released of water from dams on demand of provinces. “Due to severe heat wave and increase in demand of electricity, the power generation deficit is also greater than that experienced last year. It has further increased due to unforeseen outage of 1230 MW on some units at four Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and two GENCOs,” he added.

He said the situation might prevail for a couple of days till these plants were brought back into operation. “With further rise in demand, the NPCC may conduct unannounced loadshedding in some areas to save the system. Hence the consumers are requested to restrict their consumption of electricity to avoid forced or unscheduled loadshedding,” he maintained.

The spokesman further said that the power generation was also lower due to repair work on IPPs and Gencos and efforts were being made to bring these units to function as soon as possible.”The ministry highly regrets the inconvenience of power to the consumers,” he said.

He said at present normal load management in urban areas was of six hours, in rural areas it was of eight hours, while there was zero loadshedding for industries. Mix industry was witnessing four hours of load management. And areas with higher losses and theft were having different management schedule based on their percentage of losses, he added.

He said average demand and supply shortfall had increased from 4000 MW to above 5000 MW due to increase in demand. He said following power plants units were on forced outages due unforeseen technical faults: Hubco unit#4300 MW, Liberty Power 200 MW, Engro 200 MW, M/Garh,
U#3(180MW), Lakhra(30MW), Halmore(200 Mws) and Guddu 747 (150MW).