KP power Transmission Company

It is worth appreciation that Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Cabinet has approved setting up its own Power Transmission and Distribution Company to facilitate the transmission and sale of inexpensive hydel power to different categories of consumers. For this purpose, the provincial government will lay its electricity transmission network and build grid stations. It merits mention here that former Chairman WAPDA, Engineer Fazal Shah, in his visit of Peshawar in 2015, had made an offer of providing technical expertise in the formulation of provincial hydel energy policy. But the energy policy for tapping the tremendous hydropower potential, its transmission and distribution with low line losses, cannot be formulated because of skewed priorities.

The provincial government will need the support of federal government in building the infrastructure for decentralized and local distribution of electricity along with determination of tariff by National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA). Khyber Pukhtunkhwa could not inject 70 megawatt cheap hydel power into the national grid for several years because of delaying tactics of NEPRA, which has always been quick in approving high tariff for the electrics sharks like IPPs and its indexation with the US dollar.

Building of a decentralized transmission network and distribution system, across the province would need huge foreign funding from multilateral donor agencies like the Asian Development Bank loans for the white elephant BRT project. It will also involve acquiring the services of global donor agencies accredited consultancy firms and process of international competitive bidding, which is mandatory for approval of  such projects from the Central Development Working Party (CDWP) of the Planning Ministry and final approval from the Executive Committee of National Economic Council (ECNEC), as were done in case of BRT nightmare. The logical question is, Will the federal government green light for these approvals in addition to financial guarantees for acquiring foreign loans, when there is no well documented and schematic energy policy is in place?