The latest crisis that has Pakistani’s from all walks of life up in arms is the lack of electrical power throughout the country. While rolling blackouts or load shedding as its locally known has always been a staple of daily life in Pakistan, the problem has become acute in the last couple of years. In the second half of December, the situation got so bad that WAPDA & KESC (power generation entities in Pakistan) resorted to draconian levels of load shedding. The power cuts during this time amounted to 20-22 hours a day in most small cities and even cities like Karachi were seeing 18+ hours of load shedding.
Notwithstanding the systemic issues such as the failure to build new dams and previous Government’s inability to add even a single megawatt of new power to the grid during 9 years of its rule, it seems that the present crisis is a result of bad management and the lack of foresight. The total installed capacity of WAPDA and KESC totals around 19,500 megawatts. Almost two third of this power comes from thermal power plants (fossil fuels), one third is generated by water and about 2% comes from nuclear power plants.
The demand for electricity in Pakistan during the winter months actually goes down and this winter has not been an exception. Throughout the month of December, the electricity consumption in Pakistan hovered around 11,000 MW, down from the peak levels of 17,500 MW seen in summer. This demand was well within the installed capacity of WAPDA & KESC yet they were only generating a meager one third (6500MW) of their maximum capacity during this period leaving a huge gap between supply and demand. Their are two main reasons for this:
1. The water flow from all major dams was halted starting mid December to allow the annual cleaning of canals in January. This action effectively took all the hydro power off line.
2. The thermal power plants were working far below their potential due to the lack of money caused by the circular debt between various government agencies reaching a staggering 400 billion Rupees.
None of these issues could have possibly come as a surprise to the present government yet they choose to do nothing until violent anti government protests erupted in all major cities. A couple of days ago the President of Pakistan finally convened a summit of all stakeholders and since then the situation has improved somewhat but this fiasco provides another example of the misplaced priorities of our democratically elected leaders.
Instead of issuing stamps and coins bearing Benazir’s logo and dedicating existing airports to her name, they should focus on the plight of everyday people and try to make their lives a little bit better. Everyone understands that Pakistan is facing serious problems requiring long term solutions and the present government can’t be expected to make significant headway in the short term, yet there are things where it can make a difference. Eliminating load shedding during the winter months could just be one of them.
Photo Credits: Mona Akmal for title photo
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4. KESC, Karachi and the Power Outages
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itna fazool tim nae ha hmare pass is ko parhne k lie
the main problem is that lack of maintanance of electric machines in power plants. if any budget passed for the maintanace of machines whole money goes in black money of minister and partially distributed in other officer ranked personels. why only peoples of pakistan survive from this load sheeding problem why not politicians,b/coz we are wrong we the public of pakistan elect them and send them in assemblies..why the goverment of pakistan is still not serious on thar coal power plant and dams must be build so hydro power plants must created on dams..wind power plants must createn in coastal areas to minimize the energy and power problems..goverment of pakistan will not do so b/coz whole the money passed in budget for energy and power goes in curruption, no one here who take strong action on this serious issue which we the common public of pakistan facing…Allah Hafiz
the main cause of shortage of electricity in Pakistan is shortage of generation. after 1990 there is no any power plant is stable is pakistan. and no any enhancment takes place in generating units. other reason of of shortage of electricity is lacking of maintance of electrical machines with in a proper time. so the efficiency of machines are not good due to lacking in maintanance
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The power crisis will continue in Pakistan as long as we do not start voting and electing sincere politicians. Take a look at our current Federal Minister for Water & Power.
http://www.wikimir.com/raja-pervaiz-ashraf
http://www.wikimir.com/fraudia-list
December isn’t far away and we shall see whether he solves the problem of electricity or starts giving us another date.