Daily Times

KARACHI: Installed power generation capacity of Pakistan has reached nearly 28,399MW as more than 7,000MW has been added to the national grid since 2013, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) said.

“The generation capacity addition is expected to reach 62,185MW by the FY2024-25.” However, according to NEPRA, the final installed capacity of more than 62,000MW may not be achieved as some of the power projects, including hydro-based projects indicated to be inducted from 2022 to 2025 require extensive technical and financial prerequisites to complete. “With the current implementation and planned generation addition, the country would have generation capacity surplus for the next five to six years; ensuring sufficient margins for a reliable power supply,” said NEPRA.

The total installed generation capacity of Pakistan as on June 30, 2017 stood at 28,399MW, against 25,421MW on June 30, 2016, recording an increase of 2,978MW or 11.71%. During the FY 2016-17, the major addition to the system included thermal, nuclear and renewable-based power projects, according to NEPRA’s State of Industry Report 2017.

The federal government efforts to lower the overall consumer-end tariff may suffer if – in addition to lowering fuel costs – the capacity cost is not kept at an affordable level, warned the power regulatory authority.

“The K-Electric can barely meet the expected demand at peak times and outage of a power plant or even till 2020, outage of a single unit of around 200MW may result in overall breakdown of the system. Even the surplus expected in 2021 would not be enough to operate KE system with technically prudent margins, added NEPRA. The overall electricity consumption in the country since 2000 was growing steadily. However, during the fiscal year 2016-17 electricity consumption in the country excluding K-Electric area increased by 6.31%. “By FY2024-25, the addition of different new generation technologies will change the power mix of the sector from furnace oil-based to coal, RLNG and renewables. In the FY2016-17, about 9,000 MW is based on Gas/RLNG, which will increase to 12,626MW by the FY2020-21, however, no further addition is foreseen till the FY2024-25.”

Further drilling down, the authority says oil-based power generation plants have not been planned throughout the period, which will decline the oil-based generation capacity from 25.91% in the FY2016-17 to 10.91% in the FY2024-25.

Meanwhile, share of coal-based generation would increase from 3.09% in the FY2016- 17 to 19.56% in the FY2024-25 mainly on Thar coal-based projects, while hydro-based generation capacity will surge to 20,676MW in the FY 2024-25, representing a share of more than 33% in the overall installed generation capacity.

Published in Daily Times, July 31^st 2018.