Govt to invest Rs111 billion in power transmission system in next three years

ISLAMABAD – The PTI government has announced an investment of Rs 111 billion during next three years into the power transmission system saying it will increase the transmission capacity of national grid system to 31,500 MW by 2024.

“A massive investment of Rs 111 billion will be made during next 3 years into the power transmission system via NTDC. This will increase the capability of national grid system to transmit 28,750 MW 31,500 MW in summer of 2023 2024 respectively,” said Federal Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar via tweet. “In 2018, we started off with just 20,811 MW, the minister added. It is worth mentioning here that although the Energy Minister has announced the investment plan for next 36 months but the PTI government has been left with only 20 months in office.

In June 2021, the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) had claimed of transmitting 23,633 MW of electricity from its system for the first time in the country’s history. Beside investment in transmission, the incumbent government is also planning to install 3.649 million new connections during the remaining tenure (September 2021 to June 2023) which will increase the electricity consumption by 10557MW by June 2023, it was learnt reliably here. As per the plan (2021-2023), the distribution companies will install 22,823 new industrial connections having cumulative consumption of 1985MWs by FY 2022-23.

As per the plan, the Discos will install 3.447 million new connections by 2023 (other than industrial connections) having a cumulative consumption of 8,572MWs. It is worth mentioning that currently Pakistan has only 8,200MW surplus installed generation capacity of electricity against its peak demand. The summer peak demand in 2021 reached 25,300MW.

Similarly, to cater for the increased demand 2,283 new capacitors will be installed and 195 grid stations will be added/augmented. New ABC cable of 2,182km will be installed. Similarly 4,484km of transmission lines will be added/augmented.

As per the government plan (September 2021 to June 2023) for the remaining tenure of the incumbent government, the billing accuracy will be improved by 94% in FY 2021-22 and  96% in FY 2022-23.

Meanwhile on Friday, 100 trees were planted in the Federal Capital by the Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB). The Managing Director PPIB Shah Jahan Mirza inaugurated the event by planting a tree and thereafter all the PPIB senior officials fully participated in planting the 100 trees which include peach, citrus, guava and plum trees. The initiative was supported by the Capital Development Authority by providing logistic support.

Article source: https://nation.com.pk/23-Oct-2021/govt-to-invest-rs111-billion-in-power-transmission-system-in-next-three-years