National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) has submitted Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan 2018-40 (IGCEP) according to which peak demand will be around over 80,000MW to be produced from all sources. The IGCEP has been submitted to the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) which will evaluate the estimates of NTDC and give its recommendations/suggestion to alter the 164 pages expansion plan. In spite of massive generation capacity additions over the last five years, after witnessing acute electricity shortages since 2006, electricity demand, at certain times during the year, still exceeds the generation capacity. However, the difference is relatively quite small and demand-supply projections ensure that there will be sufficient capacity to meet the demand in the coming years.
According to the Plan, in 2018, the nominal capacity and demand match quite closely as the nominal/de-rated capacity from all generation sources hovers around 27,715MW whereas the demand is close to 26,700MW. From year 2019, the gap between nominal capacity and the demand is steadily widening, and the same starts surpassing the peak load of the system.
The expansion plan says that in order to ensure regulatory compliance and sustain it on annual basis, as required by the Grid Code, NTDC in collaboration with CPPA-G has formulated the IGCEP (2018-2040) by considering all the existing as well as firm future power plants.
In Pakistan, the generation capacity additions in past five years have been remarkable. However, planning remained fragmented all-across the energy value chain of which electricity is a subset.
In the year 2032, the cumulative nominal capacity is approximately 62,979MW whereas the peak load is projected at 50,306MW, thus a wide disparity of around 13,000MW exists between the two parameters and the capacity is in surplus as compared to demand.
As per the study outcome, in the year 2040, the total nominal capacity in the system stands at 98, 091 MW against a peak load projected as 80,425MW. Therefore, it can be observed that a significant surplus of around 17,600MW persists between the projected demand and the installed capacity.
In order to balance a projected peak load of 80,000 plus MW by the year 2040, the Wein Automatic System Planning (WASP) model gives a target of managing around 95,000MW as the nominal generation capacity.
Currently, Pakistan's electricity sector has a flexible generation mix with 69 percent share of thermal and 26 percent share of hydro generation and its turnover now exceeds 100 TWh thresholds. It comprises 18 Nos. 500 kV, 42 Nos. 220 kV and about 1,000 Nos. 132 kV substations.
Salient features of the study are as follows: (i) massive utilization of indigenous coal based power ;(ii) balancing the overall basket price with increased share of hydro power ;(iii) less reliance on imported fuel i.e. coal, R-LNG, RFO;(iv) renewable accounts for a share of 16% of the overall capacity. Meanwhile, by the year 2040, a capacity of around 9,000MW is meant to be retired.
The drastic change in capacity factor of some plants between the years 2028 to 2032 is due to certain rationale: up to the year 2032, the power purchaser is obliged to utilize 66 percent of the RLNG fuelled plants under contractual obligations. Beyond 2032, these take or pay fuel contracts of 4 x RLNG plants will expire and the results of capacity factors are thus different. Due to this reason, the capacity factors of coal-based plants, imported as well as Thar coal, are lower in the period from 2028 to 2032 and then onwards, there is a rising trend. In order to honour the contracts of RLNG plants, the model has been developed in a way, that up to 2032, the capacity factors of RLNG plants are higher than 66%. If the contracts of these plants are not modelled in the tool, these plants are dispatched way below the guaranteed dispatches of 66 percent that will result in additional burden to the electricity customer as the sector will end up paying for fuel not utilized below these capacity factors. Due to this constraint, the Thar coal-based projects are dispatched at lower capacity factor.
As these constraints are released in 2032, the capacity factors of the RLNG plants, being a costly option, reduce and those of Thar Coal based projects increase substantially which means that Thar coal is a cheaper option in the future. The gradual decrease in the capacity factors of other older plants is the result of efficient and cheap generation addition in the system. However, the sudden drop of capacity factors of certain economical plants from high utilization factors to zero is because of the expiry of respective PPAs, particularly, HCPC, Uch and Liberty Power fall in this category. These are indigenous gas based economical plants which are expected to be dispatched at high capacity factors till the expiry of their corresponding PPAs.