ISLAMABAD: The government is utilising all its resources for power generation in order to eliminate curse of load-shedding by 2018.
This was stated by Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali in a briefing on Thursday at Private Power and Infrastructure Board, Islamabad. Private Power Infrastructure Board (PPIB) Managing Director Shah Jahan Mirza explained that currently power from private sector in Pakistan constitutes around 47 per cent of the total installed capacity and due to efforts by PPIB, 31 IPPs of 9048 MW are currently supplying power to the national grid.
He briefed on the projects presently being processed by the PPIB and their various stages of development. He briefed that currently the PPIB is processing 29 projects with the capacity of 17550 MW which will be coming online during 2017 to 2024. As per commitment of the present government, projects are now being processed on cheaper fuels like Hydro, Coal and RLNG.
From portfolio of the PPIB projects, 16 hydel projects of 6400 MW are under various stages of processing. Similarly nine projects of 7400 MW based on coal and 3750 MW projects based on gas/RLNG are in the PPIB portfolio of projects. It was briefed that the PPIB is expediting the projects and facilitating the projects sponsors to bring their projects on line by 2018. It is expected that the national grid will have around 7500 MW from the private sector by 2018.
The government has announced Transmission Line Policy in 2015 under which the PPIB has been given responsibility to process transmission line projects in IPP mode. Under this policy, the PPIB has started process of 660kV HVDC Transmission Line from Matiari to Lahore in IPP mode which will facilitate transmission of power from southern part of the country to the north.
The state minister highly appreciated the work of the PPIB and its mode of working. He felicitated the PPIB for its contribution made so far in augmenting the power sector of Pakistan, as well as the present efforts to facilitate in getting rid of the menace of forced power cuts.
