According to a recent assessment by the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO), residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are enduring power outages ranging from a frustrating two hours to a taxing twenty hours a day.
The scope of the power outage in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been made public, exposing extensive losses and major load shedding in the region.
With only 324 industrial and independent feeders able to achieve zero load shedding with losses of less than 10%, PESCO is finding it difficult to manage the enormous losses. Although the problem’s magnitude is intimidating, the corporation is making an effort to solve it.
Urgent action to address the underlying causes of the electrical crisis is being called for as the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa suffer from it. Residents will have to endure lengthy periods without electricity until then, putting them in the dark.
A startling amount of lost money is revealed in a document from the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO).
Power worth an astounding Rs 195 billion has been taken so far this year alone! Additionally, clients still owe PESCO a substantial Rs 228 billion in unpaid invoices. The corporation finds it challenging to reliably distribute power throughout the province due to this financial hardship.
Only 156 of PESCO’s 1,305 feeders, according to documents, have losses that are less than 10 percent. There is no load shedding seen on these feeders, and there is very little disturbance. On the other hand, two-hour outages affect both local businesses and homes due to 156 feeders that have losses of 10%.
A closer look finds that feeders with losses of 10% to 20% are subject to two-hour load shedding, with an estimated $6 billion in financial losses and over Rs 5 billion in arrears.
In a similar vein, feeders with larger losses experience longer load shedding periods—for example, 16 hours for feeders with losses between 60% and 80%, and just four hours of restricted power supply for feeders with losses beyond 80%.
The 159 feeders that have had more than 80% losses and only receive four hours of electricity each day are the worst affected. With approximately Rs 12 billion in arrears, the entire financial loss resulting from these feeders is Rs 13 billion.
