Nandipur continues to inflict huge losses monthly, NTDC tells Nepra

ISLAMABAD: The much-touted Nandipur power plant not only continues to be a headache for the authorities concerned, but also for the electricity consumers as the project is braving the mammoth loss every month.

This has been disclosed by National Transmission Distribution Company (NTDC) here on Thursday during the hearing of fuel adjustment petition of Central Power Purchase Agency (CPPA).

The disclosure triggered the shocking waves among the participants during the hearing. Since the CoD ( commercial operational date) of the project has been achieved a year back, but still the project is unable to generate the electricity of 425 MW as its current electricity production stands at 230 MW owing to which the project is sustaining billions of loss every month. The Central Power Purchase Agency (CPPA) official said that just in the month of June, project braves loss of Rs4.46 billion because of generating costly electricity and not recovering its generation cost.

Nepra, however, refused to pass the financial burden of Rs4.46 billion on to the end consumers saying why CPPA runs the Nandipur power plant when it knows very well that there are many power houses which can produce cheaper electricity than Nandipur power plant.

The officials of the CPPA also share with Nepra saying that it has started penalizing the Chinese Company which is EPC contractor of Nandipur power plant for not producing the electricity of 425 MW even elapse of one year of achieving CoD.

Under the agreement if EPC contractor fails to produce the 425 MW of electricity after one year since CoD, then the contractor will be fined.

However, CPPA official also told Nepra since the government of Pakistan has disallowed to do so, which is why no monetary penalization has been materialized.

Earlier Chairman of Nepra Brig (R) Tariq Saddozai in his observation said that why the government is adamant to run those power plants which generate electricity at higher rates. He also showed dismayed over the output of Nandipur power plant.

However, the regulator accorded approval to the reduction of electricity tariff by Rs2.80 per unit for the month of June, 2016 on the petition of CPPA.

In the month of June, the electric power distribution companies collected RS 21 billion additional from the end consumers by charging them the rate of Rs6.82 per unit whereas the factual generation cost stood at Rs4.48 per unit.

The consumer will harness the relief of Rs2.80 per unit in the billing of September.

However, the domestic electricity consumers who consume 300 units a month and agriculture consumers will not be able to benefit from the relief.

In addition all kinds of consumers of K. Electric will also not be able to enjoy the relief.

- Originally published in The News

Originally published in