ISLAMABAD: The government is preparing to replace the existing feeder-based electricity loadshedding system with a transformer-level mechanism within the next year, Federal Minister for Energy Sardar Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari told lawmakers on Wednesday.
Under the proposed arrangement, power cuts would be imposed on specific groups of consumers connected to individual transformers instead of shutting down entire feeders. Bill recovery and electricity demand in each transformer area would be among the factors determining the duration of outages.
At present, distribution companies (DISCOs) generally enforce loadshedding on feeders, meaning a large locality can lose electricity even when some consumers in the area regularly pay their bills.
Speaking at a meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Energy (Power Division), chaired by Muhammad Idrees, Leghari said the government was working to shift the system from feeder-level to transformer-level loadshedding.
“Instead of feeders, we will now shut off electricity at the transformer level,” the minister told the committee, adding that the new mechanism would be introduced within one year.
Rs200bn required for distribution upgrades
The minister said overloaded distribution networks remained a major challenge and required substantial investment to improve their capacity.
He estimated that upgrading an individual feeder could cost between Rs600 million and Rs1 billion, putting the overall requirement at around Rs200 billion.
Leghari said the investment would be recovered from consumers over 25 years and claimed it would not impose a major additional financial burden. He also acknowledged that DISCOs had failed to make sufficient investment in their distribution infrastructure.
Theft behind a large portion of loadshedding
According to the energy minister, Pakistan has approximately 14,000 electricity feeders, with around 3,500 currently subject to loadshedding because of power theft.
He further alleged that some DISCOs were carrying out outages beyond the limits officially allowed under the prevailing mechanism.
Expensive gas affects peak-hour power supply
Leghari also attributed some peak-hour power cuts to the rising cost of fuel used by gas-based power plants.
He told the committee that gas-fired plants were not being operated during peak demand periods because fuel costs had increased substantially, with the price of a gas cargo rising from about $30 million to over $95 million.
“We carried out load shedding during peak hours to save on fuel costs,” he said.
MNA voices concerns over bills, outages
PML-N lawmaker Rana Muhammad Hayat criticised prolonged power cuts and rising electricity bills, saying the situation had made it increasingly difficult for elected representatives to respond to public complaints.
He questioned how the government would seek public support in future elections if consumers continued to face expensive electricity and frequent outages.
Hayat said high power bills had made household finances increasingly difficult and also highlighted the impact of electricity costs on farmers.
He questioned whether the agricultural sector could sustain economic growth if
farmers were unable to recover their costs, asking how the country’s GDP could expand under such circumstances.
The lawmaker also criticised what he described as the government’s excessive focus on meeting IMF-related requirements.
Leghari rejected the tone of Hayat’s remarks, telling him that such statements were irresponsible in a forum dealing with serious power-sector issues.
