On the direction of
Federal Minister for Power Division, Sardar Awais Ahmed Khan Laghari NTDC team
of experts off to China to study the Beijing model of electricity being
developed for smog to implement the same in the smog hit areas in
Pakistan.
The directions were passed in a
special meeting today at 8:00 am chaired
by the Federal Minister for Power Division to assess the situation arising due
to outages caused by the new weather conditions in some parts of the
country. Officials from all Distribution Companies, NTDC, GNECOs, NPCC and
Power Division attended the meeting.
The Federal Minister directed that
immediate measures like installation of anti smog and anti fog disc be taken at
critical points to ensure uninterrupted power supply to the consumers as there
is no shortage of generation in the country.
Sardar Awais Ahmed Khan
Laghari also directed that all CEOs of the DISCOS and NTDC to sit together and
evolve a technically sound solution for the problem. He directed that the
planning and proposals should be finalized within three to four weeks time.
The Federal Minister appreciated the
efforts of ground teams which are working in the extreme weather and fighting
the impacts of toxic gases deposits at the high transmission and distribution
lines.
He also appreciated the efforts to
control the cascading effects of the tripping which could have resulted in system
breakdown and blackouts as was experienced some years back.
The Federal Minister was informed
that areas in MEPCO, LESCO and HESCO region are being faced with unique smog
for the first time. The smog contains dust, industrial emissions, carbon mono,
ozone and nitrogen oxide which when mixes with moistures at the late hours of
night and heated by the high voltage create flash and results in breakage of
insulators.
The Federal Minister was informed
that so far in last four days 82 points at 500/220Kv transmission lines of NTDC
have experienced the same phenomenon resulting in tripping. The DISCOs level
132kv transmission lines are also faced with same king of problems and their
number is much higher.
The Federal Minister said that the
country has already entered into an era of bridging the demand and supply gap
after more than one and half decade as sufficient generation is available
within the system to meet the demand. He noted that even this morning the
system demand is 12552MW, while we have 14000MW available generation which
clearly shows that there is no shortage of electricity in the country.
The present situation is unique as
the system is faced with outages due to technical conditions triggered by
weather. He expressed the resolve that like the government success in
bridging the demand supply gape, it will also succeed in solving the emerging
problems due to new weather conditions.
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