Energy experts recommend solar power as a swift and economical solution to the prevailing energy crisis, as the resource-constrained federal government has been striving hard to find one. The PML-N led government has set for load-shedding in the country to go December 2017 for most of the energy generation sources have a long development period.
A thermal power plant, generally, takes at least one year for the project's financial close and then 40-48 months to develop the generation facility. For hydro power plant, the development period stands longer than thermal one. Dubbing the development of hydro and thermal power plants as mandatory, the energy experts don't see the two sources of energy to relieve the country's energy-starved citizens in near future.
"The solution lies in solar and wind," said an expert advising the government to opt for technologies that could lead to electricity in the shortest period of time. Even wind corridor, he said, was a time-consuming project for it was located in the country's south which is 1500 kilometers away from the load centers. The wind corridor, expert said, required long expensive transmission lines to provide electricity to consumers.
"Solar, on the other hand, can be built very close to load centers without investment and construction lead times of transmission lines," he opined. Solar technology, he said, should be promoted in line with global trends in areas where electricity is consumed without investing billions of dollars in transmission lines. "Solar power plants are a rising phenomenon in the world with India and China developing solar power in thousands of megawatts," he said.
The time was ripe, the expert said, for Pakistan to start moving towards solar Independent Power Producers (IPPs). This may facilitate the government to provide electricity sources within a short span of 10 months from the project's financial close. "While other power plants require investment in transmission lines, solar power plants have an advantage with respect to time required to connect those to the grid," he said. Development expert Nisar Ahmed says solar power can be a great source of energy, especially for the agrarian country's remoter rural areas.
"The Alternate Energy Development Board (AEDB) should conduct area-wise studies on tehsil and district levels to see what are the merits and demerit of solar energy projects," the expert said. The official quarters, however, appear to have been showing a lukewarm response toward many of the solar power projects awaiting approvals of regulatory authorities like National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC). Ahmed said solar was a developing technology in the energy-scarce Pakistan where most people live in remotely located rural areas where the installation of transmission lines was very difficult and capital intensive.
"It is going to be a great source of energy especially in far flung rural areas of the country. Industrial and even domestic units can benefit from solar power," the expert said. The solar power, Ahmed said, could also be used to run desalination plants. "It's all about planning the Planning Commission has to do along with other stakeholders (to rid the country of energy crisis)," the expert said.