Curtain Raiser: A friend of mine came up with a very creative motto for KESC during our school days at NED Karachi. It said:
zor ka jhatka..zara dheeray se lagay
It seems true now as KESC is giving lots of jolts to its customers. These jolts come slowly but linger longer than before. Power failures are more frequent now and the cost of electricity is highest ever.
Why this Post? Living abroad the ideas for a Pakistani blog mostly come through electronic news media. There is however, an unconventional source also. And that source is talking to one’s family in Pakistan. The idea for this post comes from this second source. For the past many months whenever I call home, one news always reaches up to my ears and that is ‘beta bijli buhat jaati hai’ (son, the electricity fails a lot). Finally I’ve decided to do something about it. That is, I am going to write about it.
KESC and WAPDA Jurisdictions. The elctricity supply business in Pakistan is under a sort of monopoly of two companies. For Karachi city and adjoining areas of Sindh and Balochistan, it is under Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC). For rest of the Pakistan it falls under Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA). Both companies operate their own networks and they are also interconnected to eachother at two points. One is the Jamshoro – BinQasim link in East of Karachi and other is HUBCO-KESC link in West of Karachi. Both companies can provide power to eachother through these links.
Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) was incorporated on September 13, 1913 and thus it will complete 94 years of its existence this year. At least up until 1993, both KESC and WAPDA had a power generation in excess of their demand [source 1 below]. Eventhough electricity supply has never been a sure thing in Pakistan, it had never failed so miserably as its been happening since 2006.
Before I delve further let me quickly give a brief introduction of a few technical terms
Generation: It means the quantitiy of elecricity generated. It is measured in Mega Watts (MW).
Transmission: Power Stations are usually located outside the population centers and electricity is transported from there to cities at a very high voltage. This long distance transport of electricity at high voltage is called ‘Transmission’. The units of measurement are kilo volts (KV). For Karachi the transmission is done at 220 kV, 132 kV and some circuits of 66 kV. Just for reference I also want to mention that highest transmission voltage in Pakistan is 500 KV done on a WAPDA line than runs all the way from HUBCO located at Arabian Sea coast at Sindh-Baluchistan border to Tarbela (NWFP).
Distribution: Once the electricity reaches population centers, it is distributed to substations and ‘Pole Mounted Transformers’ (PMT)s at lower (and safer) voltages. Units of measurements are kilo volts (kV). For Karachi City the distrbution voltage is 11 kV. There is 3800 km long underground cables of 11 kV as well as 2000 km of overhead wires of 11 KV in the city.
Grid Stations: Grid Stations are used to step down transmission voltage to distribution voltage. Karachi has 51 Grid Stations in its network. Grid stations supply 11 KV voltage to Substations.
From Substations the output voltage is usually 440V which is then further stepped down to 220V at more than 8000 ‘Pole Mounted Transformers’ (PMT)s located in the city for delivery to consumer homes. There are more than 10000 km of wires carrying 440V supply in the city.
As briefly mentioned above, up until 1993 both KESC and WAPDA had excess Power. KESC had an installed capacity of 1738 MW with the peak demand of 1280 MW. WAPDA had an installed capacity of 9800 MW with peak demand around 8000 MW. Believe it or not there were even talks of exporting excess power to India then.
Going thorugh daily news for the past many months I can safely say that KESC system now lies in shambles. Transmission is probably the only piece that has stayed out of negative news otherwise from Poor management to Lower generation to total breakdown of distribution is a norm now. Add to this a news item of Aug 6 that Karachi consumers will now pay extra 29 paisas/unit on their bill. This situation reminds me of a sher which I had first read in a Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi‘s book. It goes like this:
chumkaaray, chumkaar kay maaray
maaray, maar ke phir chumkaaray
Generation Problems: Let us first take a look at what is plaguing KESC at Generation Level. As of 2007, KESC owns 1756 MW of generation capacity which had overtime been degraded to 1336 MW. After some recent rehabilitation projects, the company has managed to enhance its generation levels to 1534 MW (source: Daily News, Aug 6, 2007). The approximate demand for power in the city is atleast 2300 MW. To meet the supply-demand gap, KESC purchases power from WAPDA, Independent Power Producers (IPP)s and KANUPP. Whenever any of these outside entities fail to provide power OR there is a breakdown in KESC’s own installed generation base, they have to resort to load shedding.
KESC currently buys 250 MW power from the Independent Power Producers (IPP)s located in Karachi, namely Tapal Energy, Gul Ahmed Energy and Anoud Power Generation Ltd. KESC also buys 40-50 MW power from PAEC’s Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP) (source: Daily news, Aug 6, 2007) and Pakistan Steel Mills , which provides 20 MW electricity. In addition to this Government of Pakistan has recently instructed WAPDA to sell up to 800 MW to KESC.
There has been no recent increase in the generation capacity in KESC region of supply. The last power plant to go online in Karachi area was HUBCO which falls under WAPDA and it is already more than 10 years old. There is a power and desalination plant being worked on in Defence Phase VIII which will be the first one to go on KESC network by the end of 2007.
KESC does have plans to enhance is capacity in two phases. First is going to be a 220 MW extension at Korangi Thermal Power Station (KTPS) and then in phase II there will be an additional 575 MW capacity installed at Bin Qasim Thermal Power Station (BQTPS). KESC claims to partly put the first phase in operation by 2008.
Geographic Location of KESC Power Plants: Most of the generation capacity of KESC is located in east of the city. This adds an unnecessary transmission cost in moving this power to north, west and south of the city.
Distribution Problems: Now let us come to KESC’s distribution woes. The distribution network is not only below demand but there is a huge factor of power theft also. This theft happens in three ways:
1. KESC clients who already have connections, bypass the electricity meters. Few years ago KESC was being run by the Army and even they couldn’t stop the power theft inspite of moving electricity meters of most of the city out on the streets. This was done to ensure the meters are not tempered with.
2. Industrial clients who are billed according to a sanctioned load use bigger grips to get more power
3. People use kundas (hooks) on distribution lines.
This photo shows tens of illegal electricity connections made on a single pole by (kundas) hooks in Lines Area, Karachi. Photo is courtesy of daily Jang, Karachi.
In a typial utility company, T&D (Transmission and Distribution) losses are factored at 10% of the total generation capacity. In 2004 it was told on National Assembly floor that T&D losses alone amount to 38% on KESC. This is the sign of a truly inefficient distribution network as well as massive power theft on KESC’s network.
Management Issues: One more angle of KESC’s inefficiency is its management. The company was sold to a private firm Messers KES Power and Others who took control of the company on November 29, 2005 . The new management employed Siemens Pakistan Engineering Limited as the Operations and Management (O&M) Contractor . This includes generation, transmission, distribution, maintenance etc. KESC of old days was highly unionized and the labor is naturally wary of working with the new employers.
Situation in Summer of 2007: The start of summer in 2007 saw many instances of Power riots in Karachi. This phenomena though not unheard of before was not so commonplace as it felt in 2007.
Photo to the left is a scene of Power riots that broke out in Karachi on June 10, 2007.
The situation in 2007 has become so bad that on March 10, 2007 KESC had to run a public assurance to go through just ONE DAY without power loss. See that news and its reactions here.
To conclude we can say there is a strong need for setting up of more power stations in geographically varied spots (not just east of Karachi) as well as stopping of power theft. These should be the first steps in improving KESC’s performance. KESC and IPPs should also think of using cogeneration for smaller customers where-ever electrical load accompanies a thermal load. The combined efficiency of cogeneration units is upto 80%.
References:
1. ‘Energy Crisis in Pakistan’ by Ali Hasan Cemendtaur
2. KESC ‘s official web site
3. Metroblogging Karachi
4. Some photos are taken from flickr.com. Clicking on those photos will take you to their parent website.
ATP’s Related Posts:
1. The Daredevil Electricians of Pakistan
2. KESC, Karachi and Power Outages
Affan. Natural gas is already used in Pakistan’s thermal plants (besides copal). Sui Gas is supplied to KESC as well as WAPDA thermal plants. The Korangi Power Plant extension will have its turbines running with Sui Gas too. Sui Southern Gas Supply’s existing pipelines will be used.
Problem is Sui Gas is not cheap either and it is a depletable source. The deposits are finite and we are burning our deposits of natural gas faster than ever
How about natural gas? I heard it is used widely in Pakistan and that many vehicles run on it. Can we not become self-sufficent on it? Brazil has become a net exporter of ethanol fuel, could we not do something similar?
Wind energy is definitely exploitable. Besides large capacities installed in some of the European countries like Germany (20000+MW) and Spain (11000+MW), there is substantial installed capacity in the South Asian region itself, in India. The installed capacity of the country was more than 7000MW as of last year, with the state of Tamil Nadu alone accounting for about 3500MW. Of course this may be way below potential, but the numbers suggest that wind energy makes economic sense, particularly because most of this capacity in India is in the private sector.
Balochistan and Sindh might have significant wind potential due to their proximity to the Arabian Sea, but there are also perhaps other sites with high wind potential, even without proximity to the sea.
Wind power has the additional advantage of low gestation periods, which make it attractive for power deficit situations, like is often the case in India and Pakistan. The main disadvantage is a low capacity factor (the percentage of the capacity of the station that is actually realized) – as low as 25% in some cases.
1. problems of kesc should be seen in the context of pakistani economy. moreover, far more important than the plight of kesc is how to address pakistan’s energy deficit which is going to get worse – a lot worse in fact. answer to this question will determine the fate of pakistan rather than result of any election,
2. power generation capacity has to be imported from abroad and at the minimum, the cost of generation equipment runs into hundreds of millions of dollars. suppliers of generation equipment have to be paid in dollars. since pakistan was bankrupt until about 4 years back, government utilities could not install additional generation capacity. also until a couple of years back, foreign investors were not willing to invest in pak because as stated before, pak was bankrupt in addition to being regarded as one of the most riskiest countries of the world to invest in.
3. over the last couple of years, there has been a remarkable change in the attitude of foreign investors about pakistan. investors are now willing to invest in long term infrastructure projects. however minimum time required for completion of power projects is 2-3 years which means that no new capacity will be coming on line for the next couple of years.
4. the fact that foreign investors might invest in power projects does not automatically mean that energy situation will improve for average pakistani. investors will require a proper rate of return on their investments. as a result, end consumers will have to bear the cost of any increase in the price of fuel used for power generation.
5. pakistan is an energy deficient country which has to import about 85% of its annual oil requirement from abroad. as a result of rapid economic growth in china along with overall growth in world economy, price of oil along with other fuels such as gas and coal has gone through the roof. for most of 1990’s price of barrel of oil was $20, currently the price is $70. pakistan can use hydel resources which for additional generation but dams take a very long time to build. moreover given that pakistanis are world champions of “upnay paon pey kulharee marna”, i dont see dams being built in our lifetime. this is a tragedy because hydel-power is the cheapest source of electricity and pakistan does not have to pay for fuel in precious foreign currency.
6. for the foreseeable future, pakistan is going to be running huge trade deficit because because of the increase in oil price. to finance the trade deficit, pakistan will have to attarct foreign capital. otherwise rupee will depreciate which will mean upward pressure on energy prices in rupee terms. since the current government has been able to keep pakistani rupee stable since the start of this decade, energy consumers have not felt the full brunt of rise in energy prices. energy prices would be 3-3x higher if the rupee had depreciated as much as it did in the 1990’s.
7. given that 100% of pakistani politicians are incompetent fools and most politicians are corrupt as well, i am not very optimistic that pakistan will be able to attarct the level of investment it has over the last couple of years. repeat of 1990’s and it will be curtains for pak.
A timely article, Owais.
Excellent work!
Environmental problems associated with dams and fossil-fuel powered electricity generation plants have made people look to Cleantech for power. No one should doubt that the future of power generation belongs to Cleantech.
Anytime there is a major shift in technology, nations left behind have a golden chance to catch up by making a shortcut to the new wave. Pakistan and other developing nations must shift their focus to environment friendly power generation in order to quickly catch up with the modern world.