People of Multan are experiencing four to eight hours load-shedding these days as the country is currently facing a record shortage of power which has forced the government to go for countrywide load-shedding, officials said here on Wednesday.
"Presently, there is great power shortage. We are trying to control load-shedding but there is no other choice," a senior Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) official said. "Wapda is facing 5400 megawatts power shortage. This is because of decline in power generation on the part of hydro-power and thermal plants," the official said.
"This is a record shortage in the country's history", the official told here on Wednesday. He said there has been a steep reduction in discharge of water from Tarbela and Mangla dams. "This is causing 3400 megawatts power shortage while another 2000 megawatts shortage is due to suspension of gas supply to power houses", the official said.
"Wapda is trying to reduce load-shedding within the next few days but we will not be in a position to end the load-shedding in the near future", he added. The household power consumers are currently facing the unscheduled load-shedding between two to four hours in cities, except some posh areas, and up to eight hours in rural areas.
The government expects that some 22 projects - both in public and private sectors - would start production during September 2008 to June 2009 to enhance generation capacity by 4700MW that would take total installed capacity to 22400MW.
As a result, November and December of financial year 2008-09 would be the only time when there will be no power shortfall. But in January 2009 there will again be a shortfall of 1520MW that will subside to 330MW in June 2009. It suggests that there will be no shortage during July 2010 to June 2011 because of about seven projects with a generation capacity of 1180MW would come into commercial production during September 2009 to June 2010.
However, there would again be major energy shortfalls - rising from 600MW in July 2011 to 2000MW in July 2013 and staying there throughout the financial year 2013-14. The government expects that a 1000MW project based on imported coal would come into production in June 2012, followed by Kalabagh dam that would start producing about 2400MW of electricity in July 2014.
Among the major projects, Kalabagh dam will be followed by 969MW Neelum-Jhelum Project in July 2015 and then 2250MW of Bhasha dam in January 2016. Bunji power project with an expected capacity of 2700MW would come on stream in December 2016.
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