Consumers will be charged for the surplus power generation capacity regardless of the use till 2030, a report revealed on Friday.
The Energy Institute of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums) put together a report titled Pakistan Electricity Outlook 2022 that shows that despite an optimistic increase in projected demand, the period of expensive capacity surplus will persist over the modelled period, ranging from over 15% in summer to over 40% in winter over peak demand.
It indicates that the government’s existing (and planned) capacity for the power system will continue to be significantly greater than what is required, according to the research.
The report stated that as a result, users would be required to pay for the extra capacity, which is currently valued at Rs900 billion and will increase to Rs1,600 billion by 2030, regardless of use.
“If you buy a car on lease and bring it to your home, your leasing period will immediately start whether you drive it or not,” Director Lums Energy Institute Dr Fayyaz Chaudhry was quoted as saying in Daily Dawn “And this is what is happening with our power sector where everyone continued getting power plants installed and planning to install more in future without thinking to go for digging out the root cause behind increasing demand and find out the solution for decreasing it through energy conservation.”
