ISLAMABAD: The federal government and the provinces can produce electricity at prices as low as Rs4 per unit in a year if they start using renewable energy to run thermal power plants across the country, according to Dr Nasim Ahan, founding member of Alternate Energy Development Board (AEDB).

All the power plants across the country are underutilised and are only being used between 30pc to half their capacity, he told participants of the National Level Renewable Energy Dialogue on Wednesday.

“Transmission lines, grid stations and transformers are already installed in the thermal power plants and generating licenses are also issued according to their full capacities. The plants can therefore be run by renewable energy,” he said.

All power plants in the country are not being utilised to their full capacity, conference told

He suggested provinces install wind and solar power plants and run thermal power plants at full capacity and that due to the use of renewable energy, it will become possible to produce electricity for just Rs4 per unit.

He said the provinces do not have experience of handling the administration of the power sector and need to focus on this.

“The provinces have the land for starting renewable energy projects but it is unfortunate that they are not interested in manufacturing renewable energy components. If they start manufacturing components, the cost of plants can be decreased and they can get electricity at even cheaper rates,” he said.

Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organisation representative Syed Aziz Ahmed said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is generating 105MW of electricity.

“We have also started medium term and long term projects to generate electricity. As many as 215MW of electricity will be produced from medium term projects by 2018-19 and 3,631MW from long term projects by 2020-21,” he said.

Mr Aziz said the private sector has shown interest in investing in solar energy projects.

Director Balochistan Energy Department Agha Hassan Raza said satellite pictures show that Balochistan is the darkest area of Pakistan even though it comprises 44pc of the country in terms of area.

“We are currently getting 900MW of electricity of which 100MW is imported from Iran and we still have a shortfall of 800MW. The agriculture sector consumes 75pc of electricity in the province and the province has been giving a subsidy of Rs21 billion to tubewells. Balochistan has been considering replacing the tubewells with those run by solar energy,” he said.

Mr Raza said that though the private sector takes interest in renewable energy projects, lack of coordination between the province and federal government makes it difficult to give sovereign guarantee.

Representative from Punjab, Zahid Mumtaz said the country’s electricity generation capacity in 1947 was less than 100MW and this has increased to 16,000MW today.

“Still, 45pc of the country is facing a shortage of electricity. Punjab has been focusing on renewable energy to decrease the gap between demand and supply,” he said.

The conference was hosted by the think tank Heinrich Boll Stiftung in collaboration with World Wind Energy Association.

Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2017