The Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) has reportedly firmed up a five-year Public Sector Power Generation Enhancement Plan (2010-2015) whereby 10,000 MW of new capacity would be added to the national grid, official sources told Business Recorder.
The defunct inefficiently run entity, which absorbed billions of rupees, has started load shedding across Pakistan, except Karachi due to shortage of power mainly due to annual canal closures.
The plan, first in Pakistan, identifies locations, technologies and fuel that would be used to achieve the envisaged additions, sources said. They said that power generation enhancement plan was discussed between Pakistani and US officials recently for concept clearance.
The National Power Plan 1994 is under review by Pepco/NTDC, and the five-year public sector power generation plan would be an addition and act as a catalyst.
During Pak-US energy working group consultations a couple of months ago, in the wake of third ministerial level meetings in Washington, the US team leaders complimented their Pakistani counterpart Secretary Water and Power, Javed Iqbal.
The Pakistani side energy sector review revolved around the role of power generation companies in order to secure capacity building.
What Pakistan side presented was that four major power generation companies--JPGCL, CPGCL, NPGCL and LPGCL--operating in public sector needed prompt capacity upkeep to maintain sustainable availability of power.
According to sources, the US team leaders were brought round to an understanding that the increased power outages, resulting from lowered engineering and mechanical reliability of gencos' existing machines needed urgent repair and revamping by way of rehabilitation of existing power plants through re-powering.
The installed capacity of existing power sector generation companies is 4664MW with de-rated/dependable capacity of 3580 MW and requires upgrading through putting in place a set of nine modules-based strategic plan for re-powering Pakistan's existing generation capacities.
The US side agreed that a total of 1237 MW needs to be re-powered to the gencos' tally against a price tag of $215 million.
To obviate the capacity de-rated position, the implementation and execution of following schemes was discussed between Pak-US energy sector working group leaders i.e. Secretary Water and Power Javed Iqbal and David Goldwyn and David Lipton, who focused on the following: (i) combined cycle power plant at Nandipur 425 MW; (ii) combined cycle power plant at Chichonki Mallian 525 MW and; (iii) combined cycle power plant at TPS Guddu (replacement project) 747 MW.
The future prospective power plants, contemplated for replacement of old and inefficient machines by Genco-III and Genco-II have, following technical specifications taken up with the US side for support.
By NPGCL (Genco-III)--350 MW at NGPS Multan, 350 MW at SPS Faisalabad and 200 MW combined cycle plant at TPS Shahdara near Lahore.
By CPGCL (Genco-III)--120 MW combined cycle plant at TPS Sukkur and 200 MW combined cycle plant at TPS Quetta.
The implementation of foregoing exhaustive power generation program being capital-intensive has been suggested for financing through a combination of internal and external investments originating from domestic, PSDP, public-private partnership, grants/loans from MLBs/US supported aid agencies and bridge financing modes.