National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) has submitted Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan 2018-40 (IGCEP) to the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra). The report suggests that by the year 2040 the country’s energy demand will reach 80,425MW while the projected generation by that time is 98, 091 MW having a surplus of around 17,600MW. NEPRA will review this report and give its recommendations/suggestion to alter the 164 pages expansion plan.
According to the Plan, in 2018, the nominal capacity and demand match quite closely as the nominal/de-rated capacity from all generation sources hovers around 27,715MW whereas the demand is close to 26,700MW. From year 2019, the gap between nominal capacity and the demand is steadily widening, and the same starts surpassing the peak load of the system.
Currently, Pakistan’s electricity sector has a flexible generation mix with 69 percent share of thermal and 26 percent share of hydro generation and its turnover now exceeds 100 TWh thresholds. It comprises 18 Nos. 500 kV, 42 Nos. 220 kV and about 1,000 Nos. 132 kV substations.
The expansion plan says that in order to ensure regulatory compliance and sustain it on annual basis, as required by the Grid Code, NTDC in collaboration with CPPA-G has formulated the IGCEP (2018-2040) by considering all the existing as well as firm future power plants
Salient features of the study are as follows: (i) massive utilization of indigenous coal based power ;(ii) balancing the overall basket price with increased share of hydro power ;(iii) less reliance on imported fuel i.e. coal, R-LNG, RFO;(iv) renewable accounts for a share of 16% of the overall capacity. Meanwhile, by the year 2040, a capacity of around 9,000MW is meant to be retired.
