ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali claimed that 1,500 to 2,000MW of electricity will be added to the system by May this year. He said that a National Power System Expansion Plan (NPSEP) had been prepared with the aim to doing away with the power loadshedding by 2018.
Replying questions of the lawmakers at National Assembly, the state minister pointed out that the establishment of coal, hydel, gas, solar and wind-based power projects had been envisaged under the NPSEP to bring down cost of generation. He claimed that with the addition of 1,800MW of power, the government succeeded in bringing down the outages hours from 18 hours to 6 to 7 hours in urban and 8 to 9 hours in rural areas.
He said that another 1500 to 2000MW would be added to the system by May this year. To a question, he said that a policy had been formulated to harvest available capacity of power plants. Its main objective is to get electricity without capacity payment and other obligations or guarantees. Under the policy, which is in approval process, tariff for payments to the Short Term IPP is recommended only on the “Take and Pay” basis and there will be no obligation or government guarantees. Arrangement of fuel would also be made responsibility of the power producer.
To a question, he said that these include construction of mega hydel projects, conversion of existing furnace oil-based plants to coal, construction of new coal-based plants, setting up of wind and solar power plants and rehabilitation of existing power plants.
