LAHORE: Power shortfall has risen to 1300 megawatt from 400 megawatt, leaving the company with no option but to carry out over 10 hours per day load-shedding.
It may be noted that the Lesco was carrying out five hours a day load-shedding when the demand-supply gas was 400 megawatt on May 16.
A sudden rise in demand-supply gap led to successive spells of unannounced load- shedding throughout the Wednesday night up to Thursday morning. The daily routine of citizens has been affected badly due to such an abnormal rise in load-shedding. Especially, it has become a test for the slum areas where the citizens live in small houses amidst heated nights and sizzling afternoons. Also, the citizens in posh localities were in trouble due to repeated outages on the one hand and heavy fluctuation in power supply on the other. Many of the consumers have complained about disorder of their air conditioners and refrigerators due to heavy fluctuation in load supply.
It may be noted that Lesco Chief Executive Officer Ch Muhammad Amin had apprised Federal Minister for Power Division Engineer Khurram Dastgir last week that the company has ensured zero load-shedding in all circles, barring the areas where recovery ratio is low.
The ongoing heat wave has led to substantial increase in demand for electricity, thus leaving the company with a shortfall of more than 1300 megawatt. At present, the company is being supplied with 3900 megawatt electricity against its demand of 5170 megawatt. The Lesco management has started unannounced load-shedding in the city with the rise of demand-supply gap. The management sources said the company was carrying out 13 hours a day load-shedding at present.
Earlier, the CEO of the company had claimed in the presence of federal minister for power that load-shedding was in place only on high losses feeders. Meanwhile, the number of incidents of transformers failure has skyrocketed and maintaining uninterrupted power supply has become a challenge for the company.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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