The daily 8 to 10 hours electricity load shedding in the urban and rural areas of the country will be reduced by three to four hours from tomorrow (Monday) as Tarbela and Mangla hydel power units will start generating 800 megawatt electricity after reopening of the irrigation canals, Director General Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) Tahir Basharat Cheema told Business Recorder here on Saturday.
He said the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) will release 10,000 cusecs from Mangla Dam to reopen the Jhelum river's canals from the Ist of February after a month's closure and that would put the Mangla dam's hydal power generation units into operation. Irsa is already discharging 15,000 cusecs from the Tarbela dam on river Indus for both irrigation and hydal power generation purposes.
Cheema said that addition of 800 megawatt hydal electricity and more than 300 megawatt electricity from the Chashma Nuclear Power Plant to the national grid will reduce the electricity shortfall to 1,000 megawatts from next month.
He hoped that the worst period of load shedding was over and the domestic, commercial and industrial consumers would not have to suffer long hours of electricity outages." PEPCO has already reduced the load shedding for industrial units to four hours so that to minimise the industrial losses," he added. Cheema admitted that thermal power stations were facing some difficulties in regular supply of oil to maximise their power generation output.