State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali has said that PML-N government is committed to eliminate load shedding of electricity by March 2018 and in this connection it was working simultaneously on power generation and laying new transmission lines in addition to upgrading the existing distribution system in the county.
Talking to newsmen at National Power Parks, Haveli Bahadur Shah, Jhang and at FESCO headquarters, he said that power generation in 2013 was 14,500MW, when PML-N came into power. Last year, it was increased to 16,900MW and now we are working to further enhance it to 18,000MW by November this year, he added. He claimed that 1200MW of electricity will be injected into the national grid from Chashma and Gaddu power plants in addition to exploiting the alternate energy sources of wind and solar. He claimed that major electricity projects will become operational by July 2017 to further reign-in the menace of load shedding.
He said the industry is already getting electricity round-the-clock while the industrial mix feeders are undergoing load shedding of only four hours. He said that in order to give relief to the domestic consumers in the Holy month of Ramazan, there will be a minimum load shedding for industrial sector and despite of this facility, the ministry of water and power will try to compensate this load shedding for industrial sector by providing it additional 2 percent gas on LNG. It will enable industrial sector to generate its own electricity to meet this shortfall, he added.
He said that government was also constructing new grid stations to improve the existing distribution system. Eleven transformers only in FESCO region have been replaced while five more will be added during this month. "Out of these four are power transformers which will help in stabilising electricity supply", he said and added that four new grid stations would also be completed by June this year. He said that generally the coal power plants are completed within a period of 40 months while the present government was making serious efforts to complete coal power plants at Port Qasim and Sahiwal within a record period of 28 months. He said that a power project of 230MW would also be completed in Faisalabad during this year.