Investors are ready to invest about $400 million in the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation's (KESC) power generation projects for the next three years.
This was stated by KESC chief executive officer (CEO) Frank Scherschmidt while giving a presentation on "Challenges and Opportunities of a Privatised KESC" organised by the Pakistan-Belgium Business Forum (PBBF) here on Thursday.
The company is giving top priority to complaints of its customers under a policy initiated by the new management to change working of the power utility.
Clarifying position on load shedding, Frank said the utility's power generation capacity is only 40 percent of the demand, all stations are old and worn out and other things forcing it to take this extreme measure. The city's power demand is growing at 7 percent annually and the power utility is currently facing a shortfall of 250 mega watt, he pointed out.
Above all, he said, Hubco is not providing power to the KESC as it is the National Transmission and Dispatch Company, which decides where to transmit its power.
"Unfortunately, we cannot take advantage of Hubco's power generation," he said, adding the Hubco-KESC link would start functioning this month.
The KESC is going to launch a massive campaign to motivate people to save energy. If one million households' switch off one 100-valt bulb it could save 100mw of power and if consumers put off their TV sets from standby to off mode, it could save about 20mw, he added.
The city air-conditioning plays havoc with the KESC as we have estimated about 600mw is consumed in cooling systems, he added. Sensing current trend of the city, we are expecting power demand to increase 2469mw in 2007 and 3860mw in 2015 from the current 2330mw, he added.
Frank said, to meet power demand for next 10 years, the KESC is going to install 1000mw generation plant of combined cycle and the plant would start producing 300mw in spring next year.
Secondly, the KESC is negotiating with windmill-based power generation companies and expecting about 40mw from this source.
Thirdly, Kannup is at zero generation at present and is expecting about 45mw in the first stage in next few months, 70mw in second and 90mw in the final stage.
The Abu Dhabi government (UAE) gifted two power plants to Pakistan of 240mw capacity; one will be installed in Karachi but he could not say how long it will take.
"We are also looking for purchasing power from other producers and the KESC is ready to purchase over 10mw of power from any producer," he added. Frank said the change of culture will take 5 to 7 years to turnaround the KESC.
Regarding over-billing, he said it was a big problem faced by the KESC and we have planned to computerise meter reading and billing system. After computerisation, problems of over-billing and tempering with power consumption record would be eliminated.
The KESC was giving top priority to its customers and motivating its staff to resolve problems by visiting residences and business offices in their jurisdictions. "We have decided to withdraw all disputed bills pending for decision in various courts and settled the dispute out-of-court," he offered.
Comments
Comments are closed.