ISLAMABAD: This seems a very bad news for the nation just ahead of the beginning of Eidul Azha holidays as Neelum-Jhelum hydropower project has been closed due to major cracks in its tailrace tunnel.
Minister for Power Khurram Dastgir told media that the “Neelum-Jhelum is offline and the project will not contribute 969-MW of electricity to the national grid.
Details of its suspension or fault have not been concluded yet,” Power Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan confirmed at a presser, adding that thorough investigations were currently under way of all its channels, which are deep and long, some of them under huge mountains.
The project’s construction was taken in hand in 2002 after 21 years of delay and completed in April 2018 at an estimated cost of Rs508 billion — again with repeated cost overruns and missed deadlines.
Major construction involving about 58 kilometres of tunnels was done by Chinese contractor CGGC-CMEC (Gezhouba Group).
With an installed capacity of 969MW, the project has often exceeded its production capacity and produced up to 1,040MW. Dastgir said the project was providing more than five billion units of electricity to the national grid a year and the average tariff of the project was Rs9 per unit.
In a statement issued today WAPDA said, “The reasons for the closure of the tailrace tunnel are currently being investigated. Steps would be taken to remove the blockade of the tailrace once the reasons are known.”
WAPDA said all the relevant institutions had been informed of the closure of one of the country’s top hydropower plants.
Claims of lessening shortfall
The federal minister, nonetheless, said the power supply situation has improved as generation from Tarbela alone had increased by 2,500MW. Dastgir said the Tarbela power station was generating 3,684MW from 1,125MW in the last five days because of heavy rains which have improved river inflows and the start of coal imports from Afghanistan.
He said that there was about a 50pc decline in power shortfall of 4,000-5,000MW. At the same time, electricity demand had also decreased because of improved weather, he said, adding that loadshedding would further drop during Eid days as the 1,100MW unit 2 of Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (K-2) would come on stream in a couple of days after a tedious refuelling process.
