Daily Times

The year 2022 is turning out to be a series of unfortunate events for the country’s power sector. A pall of bad luck that started with a fuel-supply crisis due to higher fuel rates in the international market; followed by a subsequent increase in per unit costs and existing generating plants that went offline for various reasons; some due to non-availability of fuel or technical reasons, while others were shut down due to accidents.

In the first week of March, Engro Corporation’s Powergen Thar (Pvt) Ltd was shut off after an explosion caused injuries to five people. According to Engro at the time, “the cause of the incident was due to an explosion that occurred in the coal conveyor unit of the plant’s 330 MW unit-1.” A fire engulfed a section of the unit soon after the explosion. For safety reasons, the operational units of the power plant were halted as well.

About seven weeks later, the Guddu Thermal Power Station caught fire too. Based on reported details, the fire broke out at Unit-2 on the night of Eid-ul-Azha, which caused the country’s national grid to face a shortfall of 747 MW. Apparently, no fire safety equipment was present at the location and the staff members were away due to the Eid holidays. The scorching resulted in a financial cost of PKR 15 billion to the national kitty with a timeline of a month to integrate back into the grid. A successive inquiry reported that this plant has a history of “availability” and “reliability” issues. It is important to mention here that a previous fault occurring at the same power plant caused a nationwide blackout on January 9, 2021.

The government is occupied with sourcing cheaper fuel, such as coal from Afghanistan.

While accidents can happen, the country’s fuel-price basket lost one of its cheaper inputs to the collective mix. On July 6, the Neelum-Jehlum hydro-power plant failed due to an obstruction in its all-important tail-race tunnel. This was a 21-year delayed project, that was completed for PKR 508 billion – after many delays. The loss to the energy basket was rated at 969 MW. The power plant was providing a PKR 9 per unit as a cheap fuel source in the overall energy mix.

Besides the ones above, following Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s assumption of office in April this year, another 27 power plants were down. Of them, nine were down due to fuel shortages. Their total capacity was logged at 3535 MW. The remaining 18 were offline – for a long time – due to technical reasons, mostly for lack of maintenance and repairs. Meanwhile, initial reports suggest another power plant’s operations were interrupted at Bin Qasim, Karachi in the form of BPQS-III. According to K-Electric’s spokesperson, a technical fault occurred inside a section of the power plant during its testing phase. Power, however, remained consistent with the megacity.

As of August 1, 2022, the power shortfall hovers around 5000-6000 MWs that is causing load shed regimes to occur all over the country. While the government is occupied with sourcing cheaper fuel – such as coal from Afghanistan – it is also scheduled to publish a National Solar Power Policy this month, as it seeks to diversify generation from non-imported and inexpensive fuel sources. But with so many technical challenges also engulfing the sector, the outlook for sustained generation appears bleak.

The writer is a freelance columnist.