KARACHI: Pakistan can produce more than 40,000 megawatt electricity through wind corridors located in Thatha district of Sindh province.
There are more coastal areas in Balochistan as well where a huge potential of the alternative green energy exists but due to lack of infrastructure facilities, the government has not conducted survey in this regard, said Col (R) Muzaffar Hussain, General Manager, Plants Foundation Wind Energy Limited (FWEL).
Briefing a group of journalists here, Muzaffar said currently the wind projects having 400 megawatt power generation capacity are operational across the country including FFC Energy (49.5 MW) Jhampir, Zorlu Enerji Pakistan (56.4 MW) Jhampir, Three Gorges First Wind Farm Pakistan (49.5 MW) Jhampir, Foundation Wind Energy – I (50 MW) Gharo and Foundation Wind Energy II (50 MW) Gharo.
Asian Development Bank (ADB) arranged the press tour for the group of journalists from Islamabad and took them to various power projects in different areas of the country.
Muzafar said work on more projects with power generation capacity of 600 MW is in process which he said would be completed by 2018. He said Fauji Foundation is the pioneer in this renewable energy and when it started work on the project investors were hesitant to invest but after successful completion of its projects, confidence in the investors developed and a number of local and foreign investors are now taking keen interest in this sector. He said different local investors namely Yunus, Gul Ahmad, Tapal and Metro are also investing in the wind energy projects.
Giving details about the FWEL-I, II, Col Muzaffar Hussain said that the projects involve construction, erection and operation of 100 MW of wind generation capacity, at Kutti Kun, close to the port city of Karachi. He said the project would sell electricity to the national grid under 20- year take-or-pay off contracts. He said the projects would pay back its total investment within 10 years and after that the cost per unit of the wind energy would be about Rs 6 while currently its cost is around Rs 10 per unit.
The Lending for the project, he said was arranged from foreign and local banks with a distribution of 66 percent and 34 percent respectively. Asian Development Bank was the Lead Foreign Lenders while National Bank of Pakistan was the Lead Local Lender. He said the equity financing for the project was arranged by Fauji Foundation (20 percent), Fauji Fertilizer Bin Qasim (35percent), CapAsia (A Malaysian Private Equity Firm 25percent) and Tapal Group (20 percent).
He said each wind tower has the maximum electricity generating capacity of 2.5 MW and overall average yield efficiency is about 33 percent while the efficiency ratio in solar energy is only 18 percent. He said during its first year the FWEL-II generated 114.5 gegawatt electricity against the set target of 143 GW.
The main reason behind not achieving the target is that the country’s transmission system is not capable to bear the extra load of electricity, Muzzaffar said adding that during the whole year, we had to shut down our plants for 200 times during the whole year as the transmission lines could not accepting the load.
He said currently 132 KV transmission lines are installed to transport the electricity to the national grid and with the support of ADB they would be upgraded to 220 KV lines. “We will achieve the target of power generation when the transmission lines would be upgraded”, he added. He said that power tariff for wind power projects has been reduced to 10.4 cents which indicates that this could prove a promising sector for future investments.
Highlighting the social impacts of the project, the GM plants said the project involved 800 local people during its construction period and now due to the development of road infrastructure, transportation has become easy. He said most of the local people depend their living upon fishing and due to easy access, they capture jellyfish which is very costly and take it to Karachi and earn a good amount.
