22 April 2010
While power protests and outages continue unabated across the country, the two-day energy summit held in Islamabad last Monday and Tuesday agreed on a host of energy saving measures. They include: two weekly off days for six months, advancing clocks by an hour, staggered industrial closure for one day a week, shutting of businesses at sunset, partial diversion of gas from industry to power generation, disconnection of electricity to billboards and payment of Rs 116 billion to power companies to ease off the energy crisis.
If implemented, these energy conservation measures would reduce energy demand by about 2400MW and other steps envisaged would bring into utilization 1300MW of generation capacity currently lying idle because of financial or technical reasons.
The energy summit attended by the federal and provincial governments also agreed to speed up implementation of 1125MW of already approved rental power projects(RPPs) and fast-track completion of another 2100MW of independent power projects (IPPs) within eight months.
The provincial governments agreed to restrict electric supply to marriage venues to three hours in Punjab – 8pm to 11pm in Punjab and from 9pm to midnight in Karachi. Besides, electricity will not be provided to tube-wells during peak hours, thus saving about 265 MW. The electricity to commercial billboards and neon signs would be disconnected and these would be converted into solar power. The five day week for six months would save about 900MW for the industrial sector. The staggering of once a week holiday for the industrial sector would provide a saving of about 175MW which would be diverted to commercial centres. The closure of business centres at sunset is estimated to provide a saving of about 500MW a day while lighting up of alternate street lights would save about 350 MW. The daylight saving measure by advancing clocks by an hour for six months would save up to 250MW a day.
