Federal Minister for Science and Technology Rana Tanveer Hussain has said that load-shedding will continue in the country due to obsolete transmission system. This he stated during briefing to the Senate Standing Committee on Science and Technology here on Tuesday. "There is shortage of funds and capacity to replace the transmission system. Even if we generate more electricity, load-shedding will remain until improvement of the transmission system," he said.
The committee met with Osman Saifullah Khan in the chair where it was briefed by the Pakistan Engineering Council on Net Metering Policy for solar energy system. Chairman stated that transmission was a big challenge and may take 20 years to overcome. The committee was informed that Pakistan was being considered best solar zone and had the capacity to generate 2,000 KW per km of power against 1500 KW in China. However, Discos have unjustified fear of revenue loss.
The committee observed that if PEC was facing so many hurdles in solar power generation, then what would come of common consumers. Senator Azam Swati said the country should move towards solar at all costs to meet the demand and supply gap and produce cheap electricity, but government needed to incentivize it. Senator Ateeq was of the view that there was need of trust building.
According to PEC briefing improvements were required in NEPRA Net Metering Regulations-2015. The grid connected inverters and generators shall comply with Underwriter Laboratories UL 1741 standard (Inverters, Converters, Controllers and Interconnection System Equipment for Use with Distributed Energy Resources) which addresses the electrical interconnection design of various forms of generating equipment, IEEE 1547 2003, IEC 61215, EN or other international standards.
In the agreement, it is stated the 3 phase consumer is only eligible (what about single phase consumer), it was maintained in the briefing. PEC made several recommendations which state that Net metering SRO 892(1) 2015 is excellent order and it should be implemented as early as possible. Discos should set up clear SOPs and provide one window operation.
Total time taken from application to interconnection should not be more than 15 days up to 20KW and 45 days from 20 to 100KW and 60 days from 100KW to 1 MW. SOPs should clearly define the interconnect study charges as per slabs and who will conduct this study. It further recommended that IEC equivalent to UL standard 1741 for inverters should also be mentioned as IEC standards were mostly practiced in Pakistan and number of standards should be fixed rather than all other standards.
List of consultants should be approved for interconnect study; agreement should be for 10 years while list of approved manufacturers for inverters should be included, PEC recommended. The committee also nominated Senator Ateeq Sheikh as Member of the Board of Governors of Pakistan Halal Authority; after Azam Swati objected to the proposed name of Atta-ur-Rehman saying that person with relevant experience could be appointed against the post.
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