By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Power Division imposed longer electricity outages than it had promised just a day earlier after a sudden drop in hydropower generation widened the supply gap, triggering complaints from households and businesses across the country and forcing the government to issue a public apology on Wednesday.
The ministry had announced on Monday that it would cap daily outages at 2.25 hours to avoid any further rise in electricity prices. On Tuesday, however, distribution companies in many regions delivered noticeably extended blackouts, especially during nighttime peak hours, as hydropower output fell sharply.
In a statement, the Power Division said it was “apologising for the additional load management necessitated by reduced hydropower availability.” Officials urged consumers to cut back on electricity use, particularly after dark, and to adopt energy-saving measures to help narrow the shortfall. The ministry attributed the wider gap directly to a 1,991-megawatt decline in hydropower generation overnight. That drop contributed to an overall shortfall of about 4,500 megawatts when peak demand hit roughly 18,000 megawatts, a spokesman said.
The cause was lower water releases from the country’s main dams. The Indus River System Authority is dispatching water to the provinces based solely on current demand, which is running well below last year’s levels because of recent rainfall and the ongoing harvesting season. As a result, utilities carried out slightly more outages than the schedule they had published.
The Power Division said the extra cuts were confined to nighttime hours and that daytime supply remained intact. Still, some companies, including the Islamabad Electric Supply Company, separately notified customers of up to three hours of morning outages. Officials said they expect the situation to improve soon. Water releases from the reservoirs are forecast to rise in the coming days, which should boost hydropower generation. They also pointed to expected gains in the supply of regasified liquefied natural gas, though they gave no details on sourcing amid tight spot-market conditions and force-majeure declarations at Qatar’s LNG facilities tied to the Middle East conflict.
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