Electricity Problem in Pakistan

Energy Crisis in Pakistan is one of the severe challenges the country is facing today. Electricity, gas, water, fuel is essential part of our daily life and its outage has severely affected the economy and overall living of ours. Thousands have lost their jobs, businesses; our daily life has become miserable. Pakistan is currently facing up to 18 hours of electricity outage a day, is expected to face more if not dealt with in time.The country may plunge into energy crisis by year 2007 due to rising electricity demands into which double digit figure following increasing sale of electrical and electronic appliances on lease finance, The shortage in electricity production in Pakistan is worsening day by day which is causing long break downs and load shedding as called by government. The crisis started about a year ago when all of sudden the electricity consumption increased to a point where all the electricity producing sources failed to fulfill the demand. Apparently it is a matter of supply and demand.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the nature of this crisis and to propose some short-term as well as long-term solutions to this problem. This study is exploratory in nature.

Causes:

The country is facing a huge electric power crisis today. This crisis appears insurmountable in the near or even long-term future, unless proper understanding and correct implementation is undertaken on priority basis. The demand for electricity in Pakistan during the winter months actually goes down and this winter has not been an exception. The systemic issues such as the failure to build new dams and Gen. Mushraf Government's inability to add even a single megawatt of new power to the grid during 9 years of his 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.
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. There 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.

Solution To The Crisis

Through my investigation and discovery, I suggest that the country that i am referring can solve this crisis by refering to the solution below :

1. Government should not get such kind of IPP’s (Independent Power Producers) circular Debts if Government  is unable to pay the charges.

2,Government must produce electricity from coal because their country are having a huge amount of coal they should generate electricity from it.

3.They should make phases and upgrade transmissions lines according to the usage of electricity in Pakistan.
If there is any kind of lack in investment to settle new plants of energy than the Government should sale shares in market to have more investment to cover up energy crisis.

4.If K.E.S.C can generate the electricity for two provinces (Sindh, Balouchistan) than Govt: should get interest in that case.

5.The government should try to make alternative way to produce Electricity at least cost per unit so we can consume and run our factories and so on for having least cost goods production.

As a conclusion, people from other countries should save electricity to avoid electricity crisis. So you won't regret when electrical crisis happen. 

Source From :

Prof Zahid Ali Mangi
D J Sindh Government Science College
Karachi
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