LAHORE, May 18: Over 18-hour loadshedding returned to urban feeders on Saturday after a break of one week as temperature rose to mid-40s in the plains of the country and generation plants started going offline due to paucity of fuel.

On Saturday, the gap between generation (9,000MW) and demand (over 16,000MW) rose to more than 7,000MW, forcing planners to resort to 18 hours loadshedding in urban areas and more than 20 in the rural areas.

By Friday afternoon, according to the Pepco record, Atlas Power (219MW), Nishat Power (200MW), Nishat Chunian (200MW), Kohinoor (124MW) and AES Lal Pir (249MW) went completely offline. Other generation giants like Kapco (1,342MW), Hubco (1,200MW) and Muzaffarghar (1,130MW) reduced their operations, leaving the entire generation to gas-driven and hydel (4200MW) plants in the country. The reduction in their generation is best reflected by the Hubco, which was contributing only 300MW against its total capacity of 1,200MW.

“Fuel supply to these plants is like daily purchase of open flour for a family,” says a former managing director of Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco). The day one fails to buy flour, the family would go without meal.

By Friday afternoon, the sector has to pay for fuel for next three days. With current collection, which is not even sufficient for daily purchase, such a payment is simply impossible. That is exactly what happened by Friday afternoon, the plants started going off one after another and by Friday night disaster struck the sector and the country, he said.

He hoped the situation would start improving by Monday afternoon when the sector is able make some cumulative payments for fuel. But, the crisis would be repeated next Friday to nearly the same level, for the same reasons.

“The crisis goes much deeper,” says a former general manager (finance) of Wapda. Current average notified (actual recovery) tariff is Rs8.89 per unit, whereas average determined (cost of service) tariff is Rs11.91 per unit – leaving a gap of Rs3.02 per unit that comes from the government as subsidy. The power sector recoveries are only 90 per cent in the first nine months of the current fiscal. That means it is only recovering Rs8 per unit, suffering a loss of Rs0.89 per unit.

This amount runs into billions of rupee and translates directly into fuel shortage and plant closures. On top of it, the National Electric Power Regulator (Nepra) has increased tariff to Rs14.56 per unit in April this year and did so with retrospective effect – from July 1, 2012 as the Disco petitions were submitted to it in April last year. This amount of Rs2.70 per unit, which should have been pumped into the sector in the last nine months, went missing. That naturally translated into fuel shortage and regular plant closures.