KARACHI, Sept 29: While there was no letup in power outages on Monday, the Karachi Electric Supply Company management declared it had signed an agreement with an unspecified company for the supply of 50 megawatts of electricity from a rental facility, which will be commissioned for two years.

According to a press statement issued by the KESC, the arrangement is being made to provide additional capacity and lessen the generation shortage.

The 50-megawatt rental power will be installed in Haroonabad and West Wharf and will be integrated directly into the Karachi utility grid. The initial 20 megawatts are due to be commissioned by the end of this year and the remaining capacity will be fully available by March 2009.

Although the press release has not named the company with whom the agreement has been signed, the KESC has claimed the rental power contractor, operating various temporary gas power projects in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia will also provide a full turnkey power solution, including design, installation and full maintenance.According to sources, the contractors have already been paid the amount to meet the cost of transportation of the generators from an African country. The KESC has also agreed to provide gas to the rental power contractors. It is not known how the cost per unit will be determined and who will foot the bill of gas.

The statement quoted the new chief executive officer of the KESC, Naveed Ismail, as saying that controlling load-shedding is an immediate priority of the privatised power utility.

Meanwhile, two generation units of the KESC’s Bin Qasim thermal power station (BQTPS) continued to produce electricity much below the optimum capacity, with the quarters concerned saying that the privatised management of the utility has been trying to save its fuel expenses.

The electricity generation output of various units of the Bin Qasim plants on Monday were: Unit 1 produced 165MW electricity, Unit 2 produced 175MW, Unit 3 70MW, Unit 4 80MW, Unit 5 185MW, while Unit 5 of the Bin Qasim plant produced 180MW electricity.

As the generation units of the BQTPS gave an accumulative output of 855MW electricity, the power utility faced a shortage of over 300MW in the last 24 hours, causing multiple spells of power load-shedding in various residential and commercial areas of the city. Each locality of the city was deprived of electricity for two hours during each spell of load-shedding before Iftar time. Residents of various localities also complained that they were not being spared of power load-shedding and power outages during the vital intervals of Iftar and Sehri time in Ramazan.