Load Shedding or self imposed punishment?

        I have a glimpse of my childhood when the word ‘load shedding’ used to sound very scary. That word vanished for many years until it reemerged some 4 years ago. These days, a baby learns ‘terrorism’ and ‘load shedding’ prior to several other words. One of the famous sentences of our conversation these days is “Apke ghar light hai?”

       All of us are well aware that power sector is the backbone of any country’s economy, therefore I’m directly going to scrutinize some history that lead to present disaster and then some suggestions.For the convenience of readers, I'll avoid using technical terms.

       It was back in 1988, during the reign of late Benazir Bhutto when we faced this crisis for the first time. At that time, IPP (Independent Power Producers) was introduced which encouraged foreign companies to invest in Pakistan,despite the strong opposition by Pakistan engineers mainly on the forum of IEEE. Apparently the problem ended and in the late 90s and early 2000s, we had extra power on our grids than our demand. This was because of the shut down of some factories during this period, owing to government's policies.

       Now after 9/11, huge amount of money was directed towards Pakistan which caused increase in the selling of electric appliances and the result is that Pakistan is suffering from about 8% increase in electricity demand every year. This ratio is much higher than any of our neighboring countries.

       To meet this demand, instead of working on KalaBagh Dam and utilizing our coal resources, we expanded IPP and presently it constitutes about 40% of Pakistan’s present generation. It is to be noted that IPP are all combined cycles power plants that use high speed diesel and natural gas as fuel.

       We witness that almost every month, extreme crisis of power emerges, steps down for a few days, and then reemerges. This is because of the inability of the government to pay IPP every month in time. Present crisis of power has emerged due to the fact that Government is Rs 230 billion indebted to IPP which has shut down all 16 power plants constituting 40% of our generation.I had the opportunity to do internship in one of these plants.

        Now, why doesn't government pay IPP? Corruption? Or what? The fact is that with the exception of Punjab, the recovery of electricity bills is only 60-70% whereas in Punjab, it is 99%. So  WAPDA is unable to recover the units and in turn PEPCO and government suffers, which is due to the internal law and order situation due to current mayhem in our country.The line losses are much less in  MEPCO, LESCO and GEPCO while these losses are maximum in FATA. The all famous ‘Kunda’ System and electricity theft increases line losses. So we ‘Awam’ are equally involved in this.

        Finally, what’s the solution? IMF advises us to privatize the distribution companies but this will make the tarrif go out of the reach of even middle class people. The foremost situation is maintaining law and order. They say "Charity begins at home"; so the consumers must avoid wasting electricity. In the long run, we will have to construct dams and avoid the squandering of water. Our present government has consecrated water which has been creating havoc in the form of floods every year. The so called efforts to solve this issue with Rental Power Plants are just the tantrums of government. We’ll have to utilize coal. Currently, coal energy constitutes only 0.5% of our generation while in India,this is 60%. Although our coal is of low quality yet the scientists like Dr. Sumar Mubarak Mund and his team are working on geothermal project that includes firing the coal within the ground to avoid pollution. We must utilize sun light to produce solar energy as solar power is the future of this world.Thus we need to get rid of expensive units of IPP which is actually the wastage of Oil and Natural Gas. This will resolve our problem of gas load shedding as well. But unfortunately, our leaders never had and not even have the will to step up and solve the problems permanently. Our leaders have never thought ahead of their terms, thus no reforms in this sector have been done. We have closed our eyes like some foreign power is going to end this nightmare for us. Currently there is no such project in progress as can solve the power crisis within next 2-3 years. Every government claims to have ‘inherited’ this problem which is true. But that’s why they opted to lead us.