Responding to a question, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said the power rentals are only the easiest solution to the electricity crisis as other projects including hydel, thermal and solar would take five to ten years to contribute power in the national system that is unaffordable for the country as well as the people.
He told the House that presently, 36 power generation projects, that would contribute almost 7229MW of electricity, are under hand to cope with the shortage, adding that besides, conservation measures are also being taken such as day-light savings in time, use of energy savers, and reduction in losses.
He said construction of ten dams has already been started and most of those would be completed within a couple of years, adding that construction of 13 small dams would be initiated in 2010 or 2011 and take another two years for completion.
He said after completion, all 23 dams would contribute above 6150MW of electricity in the national grid, adding that another 14 dams are also in the study with the planned capacity to generate 21024MW.
He said the prime minister has allowed the parliamentarians to use their development funds for solar energy projects as two of the MNAs have already expressed their demands of power supply to some of the houses in their constituencies.
To another question, the minister said 46 power generating units have produced 90.262 billion KWH from June 2008 to June 2009, adding that the old plants, overhauling and maintenance outages, short supply of oil and gas and low gas pressures are the reasons for not producing electricity according to generation capacity.
The minister said there are 17 independent power plants functioning in the country in private sector, generating 6214.2MW of electricity, he added.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2009