Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has decided to impose an additional charge of 70 paisas per unit on power consumers to recover $1.5 billion invested in a transmission line project.

The money would be recovered in 25 years in order to meet the expenses to be incurred on the Lahore Transmission Line (LTL) project. Earlier, the government wanted to charge Rs 1.1 per unit to mitigate the deficit of Rs 200 billion. However, the regulator allowed increase of Rs 0.70 per unit to generate Rs 156 billion. The money would be spent to lay 878-km long transmission line from Matiari to Lahore in order to transport 4,000 megawatts of electricity.

The line would stretch 878 kilometres from Matiari to Nankana Sahib District near Lahore. Out of the total 878 kilometres, 550.65km would cover Punjab, while 314.9 kilometres would cover Sindh. It would be a 660-kilovolt High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) line and would help transmit 4,000MW of generated electricity from new coal power plants at Port Qasim, Hub, and Thar, to northern parts of Pakistan.

The National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) and State Grid of China (SGCC) had signed a cooperation agreement in April 2015 for the development of about 660kv HVDC Matiari-Lahore transmission line, wheeling 4,000MW generation in southern part of the country to mid country load centres. The project was also among China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) priority projects.

The transmission line would have the maximum capacity of transmitting 4,000MW from generation capacity of about 660MW Engro Thar Coal plants, 1,320MW of SSRL Thar Coal, 1,320MW of Port Qasim project, 660MW each of two Hub Coal Power plants and 330MW of Siddique Sons Energy.

The petition said the NTDC had opted for HVDC 660kv line for bulk power transfer through a long distance line on the basis of feasibility and cost studies by SNC-Lavalin of Canada in 2013. Two converter stations at Matiari and Lahore would also be part of this project to interface with the existing transmission system.

Moreover, the project was associated with power generation plants on imported and local coal at low operating costs that would save billions of dollars annually, which would otherwise be needed for import of oil for equivalent electricity generation.

This is the first ever private sector transmission line project, which would take 36-42 months for development, parallel with power generation plants at Thar, Hub and Port Qasim, and would be ready to evacuate power from those plants.