A few comments from friends on Letter to the Editor on above subject (BR, Dec 4) need clarification/confirmation in support of the importance of "much-needed Forensic Audit of IPPs".
It is wrongly assumed that all thermal power plants are intrinsically designed to generate power most efficiently. Unless the regulator ensures acceptance of highly efficient power plants, you could literally be wasting enormous amount of energy, resulting in high costs of generated power. Without the detailed audit, we will never know the scale of the "problem" and thus the explanation why it is so important! The entire scenario will change if the inefficiency of thermal power plants installed under IPPs are high-lighted. For sure, the IPPs were obliged to install and operate all power plants efficiently and if the Audit is done professionally, we all will know the actual heat rate and this the efficiency of each operating power plant and the "cat will surely be out of the bag"! The last para of the referred letter is not clear due to "typos" as comment was made on the required positive role of the regulator. Without this, it will be very difficult to obtain the correct findings.
Hopefully, we will soon see some positive role of the regulator to ensure much-needed forensic audit of each IPP.
Beyond the IPPs, we need to ensure high-efficiency thermal power plants for which we had a very good example of KE's Combined Cycle Power Plant at Korangi which was installed with gas turbine inlet air cooling technology, making it the most efficient thermal power plant in the country but KE was allowed to remove this efficient system and they have gone back to the "normal" inefficient combined cycle operation like the other such power plants including the gas-based huge combined cycle power plants set up by the last government!
How can we ever solve our energy problem if we are not following the basic requirements of efficiency to reduce cost of power?
Engr. Ainul Abedin (Karachi)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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