At a press conference here on Saturday, Muhammad Khalid, who is director-general (energy management and conservation), said even village electrification plans had been put on hold to restore supply to the flood-affected areas.
Four of nine distribution companies that suffered the most included Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco), Multan Electric Supply Company (Mepco), Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) and Quetta Electric Supply Company (Qesco).
And according to initial estimates, these companies suffered a loss of Rs10 billion.
All material procured for development was now being diverted to these companies and every store manager had been told to follow the instructions. The company staff would restore supplies as floodwaters receded, he said.
During the floods, three hydel generation stations – Jagran (30MW), Malakand (80MW) and Chashma (160MW) – suffered losses of varying degrees and had gone out of operation. The floods also hit three thermal power plants – Pak-Gen (350MW), ASE-Lalpir (350MW) and Kapco (1,386MW).
All of them are yet to come back except for Kapco, which started partial generation of 600MW. Both other thermal stations would take two weeks to come back after water receded.
About individual grid stations, the director-general said that Swat remained the worst hit: floods simply swept away Madian and Shangla grid stations.
Third big grid station, Khawazakhela, is still inaccessible. The rehabilitation work there depended on how quickly these areas became accessible to Pepco staffers, allowing transportation of men and material.
The company, however, was anxiously waiting for undertaking rehabilitation task when and wherever possible, he claimed.
About reported loadshedding during Seher and Iftar timings, Khalid said that it was not because of paucity of power, but for other reasons. The company switched of industrial feeders during 3am to 5am.
Those domestic consumers falling on those feeders suffer, and consider it routine loadshedding. Similarly, commercial feeders were switched off at 9pm, also causing problem to domestic consumers living in those allied areas.
Since it also include Taraweeh prayers timings, they become, and justifiably so, more irritated. Certain areas becoming overloaded during certain times of the day also aggravate the problem of load management, he said and added: “It is system and scheduling constraints that are causing problem for the people and the company, not loadshedding caused by the gap between generation and demand of electricity.”
The director-general insisted that even today, the gap between generation and demand was not over 2,000MW, which was manageable without attracting popular ire.
The company had planned its distribution schedule at up to 3,000MW gap. The current gap was 33 per cent less than what the company scheduled for, but other factors came into play to make a bad satiation worse for everyone, he concluded.
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