ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Wednesday said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government fulfilled its obligation of ending severe power load-shedding, and added 10,000 megawatts of reliable, sustainable and cheap electricity to the national grid.
While addressing at a ceremony to launch the consumer friendly Net-Metering Framework at the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology in Islamabad, the prime minister said before 2013, the governments were only able to generate 20,000 MWs of electricity in 66 years, however in only a period of four years, the PML-N government added 10,000 MWs of electricity.
The prime minister said other projects to add another 15,000 MWs of electricity were in the pipeline, and said this generation capacity would be enough to meet the needs of the Country till the year 2030.
Under the formal launch of an upgraded consumer friendly Net-Metering Framework, even domestic consumers would be able to sell their surplus solar energy to the local power distribution companies and earn up to 14 percent profit to enable them recover their investment and help the Country meet its energy needs.
The COMSATS Institute of Information Technology has become the first public sector university to add 100 KW of solar power to the national grid.
Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the streamlined system of Net Metering would provide incentives to the common people to not only generate solar energy for their personal use but also sell it to the government and get good returns.
“The potential is vast and would lead to better returns on their investments,” the prime minister said adding the Country was now utilizing a healthier diversified energy mix of hydel, nuclear, coal, liquefied natural gas (LNG) powered besides solar and wind generation.
The prime minister said today the quantum of load shedding had drastically reduced as the demand supply gap had diminished and the only issues were related to transmission and distribution constraints, that were being addressed.
“Now our challenge is to make the system more efficient, reliable and cheap,” he added.
The prime minister termed the launch of the improved net metering system a milestone, and said though not new, yet it would go a long way in helping the government provide cleaner energy to those consumers who were not generating their own power. He said Pakistan would now be a step closer towards achieving its global climate change commitments.
