MUSHTAQ GHUMMAN

ISLAMABAD: National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has accused public sector power generation companies (Gencos) of showing the worst-ever performance in three years i.e. 2012-2013 and 2014, causing billions of rupees financial loss to the national exchequer as CPPA-G purchased energy from RFO – power plants at Rs 19.1 and Rs 19.7 per unit and kept gas-based power plants on a standby mode.

Nepra, in its performance evaluation report of four public sector generation companies i.e. Jamshoro Power Company Limited (Genco-I), Central Power Generation Company Limited (Genco-II), Northern Power Generation Company Limited (Genco-III) and Lakhra Power Generation Company (Genco-IV), has also disclosed equipment deterioration, lack of scheduled and preventive maintenance, insufficient technical expertise and poor management.

Nepra’s evaluation is contrary to the recent claims of Water and Power Ministry that it saved billions of rupees through efficient utilization of Gencos.

Nepra is the sole regulator of power sector in the country and protection of consumer’s interest is an integral part of its regulatory regime. In this regard, apart from monitoring performance of transmission and distribution licencees, Nepra also monitors the performance of generation licencees. Nepra framed Performance Standards Generation Rules (PSGR) back in 2009. Under PSGR, each generation company is required to submit to Nepra a quarterly performance report as per the format prescribed in the PSGR. The data provided by generation licencees is reviewed and analyzed on a regular basis.

This Performance Evaluation Report (PER) is based on the quarterly reports submitted by Gencos for years 2012, 2013 and 2014. The report highlights the performance of Gencos on the basis of parameters namely, auxiliary consumption, standby mode, availability factor, net capacity factor, net output factor and energy availability factor.

The performance evaluation report disclosed that the data provided by Gencos reflects that GENCO-I, II & III consumed excess auxiliary power over the allowed limit with an energy loss of around 777 million during service mode, which translates into a financial loss of about Rs. 11.69 billion to the national exchequer during the years 2012, 2013 and 2014. TPS Muzaffargarh (GENCO-III) contributed almost half of this loss.

The data provided by GENCOs further shows that certain gas based power stations such as GTPS Kotri, GTPS Faisalabad and SPS Faisalabad remained on standby mode for most of the time during the years 2012, 2013 and 2014 thereby squandering the potential to generate significant amount of economically efficient energy. On top of that, the units/machines of GENCO-I, II &III have drawn around 763 million kWh (units) energy during standby mode under the head of auxiliary power consumption, resulting in a financial loss of around Rs. 6.04 billion to the national exchequer. Almost half of the energy consumption under standby mode was contributed by TPS Muzaffargarh.

The data also indicates that few units of TPS Jamshoro (GENCO-I), TPS Guddu (GENCO-II) and TPS Muzaffargarh (GENCO-III) have violated the allowed limit of planned and unplanned outages as specified in their respective Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) signed with the NTDC. Had this limit not been exceeded by aforementioned power stations, they could have been available for more time for generating power.

Nepra data submitted by Gencos reflects that the availability factor, on average during the 3 years, remained very low for some of the power stations such as TPS Jamshoro, TPS Guddu and Lakhra power stations. The latter in particular showed the worst results and remained available only for 39% of the period.

While reviewing the results of Net Capacity Factor (NCF) , it was observed that the NCF remained quite low mostly for the gas-based power stations such as GTPS Kotri, GTPS Faisalabad and SPS Faisalabad implying that most of the time these power stations remained on a standby mode or planned/unplanned outage mode during the subject period.

The Net Output Factor (NOF) for some of the power stations of Gencos remained very low implying lack of maintenance on the part of respective Gencos . This also shows the unreliability of power Energy Availability Factor (EAF) which measures the amount of time in which a unit/machine practically remained available i.e. less any equivalent planned/unplanned de-rated hours, for generation of power at full net capacity. After reviewing the data, it was noted that the EAF is not equal to the AF in case of TPS Jamshoro, TPS Guddu and TPS Muzaffargarh, which shows that their net capacity was temporarily reduced due to equivalent planned and unplanned de-ratings during the reported period.

In addition RFO-based TPS Jamshoro and TPS Muzaffargarh remained the most expensive power stations among all public sector Gencos as the CPPA-G procured energy from them at the unit rate of Rs. 19.7/- and Rs. 19.1/- respectively during the years 2012, 2013 and 2014.

On the contrary, Gas-based GTPS Faisalabad and TPS Guddu were found to be the most cost-effective power stations as the CPPA-G purchased energy from these at the unit rate of Rs. 5.3/- and Rs. 5.9/- respectively. This indicates that gas-based power stations contributed economical energy during 2012 to 2014 but their units were mostly put on standby mode during this period, due to which the energy was procured by CPPA-G from the RFO-based expensive power stations at that time. The data provided by Gencos present a poor state of affairs at Gencos’ power stations which may include equipment deterioration, lack of scheduled and preventive maintenance, insufficient technical expertise and poor management. Therefore there is a need to improve the performance of Gencos since they can contribute a significant share of the total energy demanded.