Pakistan apologises for longer outages as hydropower output falls

Pakistan’s government on Wednesday moved into damage-control mode after households in several areas faced heavier electricity cuts than had been publicly indicated a day earlier. In Islamabad, the Power Division issued an apology and said the extra load management was triggered by a sudden drop in hydropower output at night, turning what had been presented as a limited power-saving plan into a wider supply disruption for consumers.

The trouble came after authorities had already announced a 2.25-hour daily interruption window between 5pm and 1am, arguing that controlled outages were preferable to running expensive fuel and passing a sharper tariff increase on to consumers. The government had also said K-Electric and Hesco would stay outside that plan because cheaper southern generation options were available there, but complaints from other regions quickly suggested the burden on users was becoming heavier than advertised.

According to the Power Division, the immediate pressure point was a steep fall in hydel generation during peak evening demand. Officials said hydropower production slipped by 1,991 megawatts overnight, helping create a peak shortfall of roughly 4,500MW at a time when demand was around 18,000MW. The ministry maintained that daytime supply remained manageable, but the nighttime squeeze widened the demand-supply gap enough for distribution companies to impose more cuts than consumers had expected.

The official response broadened as the backlash grew. The Power Division urged people to conserve electricity, especially after sunset, while Peshawar Electric Supply Company warned that users across its service territory could face an extra two to three hours of outages on top of normal scheduling, including some feeders that usually avoid loadshedding. Later in the day, President Asif Ali Zardari directed authorities to make every possible effort to reduce the cuts and insisted that any load management be conducted transparently and according to pre-declared schedules so citizens are not blindsided.

Behind the immediate power cuts is a wider fuel and import problem that has been building for days. The government had already linked the outage plan to LNG constraints after Qatar declared force majeure following attacks on its gas field during the broader regional conflict involving Iran. Because Qatar remains Pakistan’s main LNG supplier under long-term arrangements that can provide up to 1,000 million cubic feet per day, any prolonged disruption quickly feeds into Pakistan’s electricity mix, especially during peak hours when the system relies on flexible thermal generation to back up falling hydel and solar output.

That pressure has forced policymakers to examine uncomfortable trade-offs. Earlier reporting showed officials were considering sharply raising domestic gas flows to the power sector, potentially lifting supply to around 160-170mmcfd from roughly 85-90mmcfd by the end of April or early May. The dilemma, however, is political as much as technical: diverting more gas to power plants could shield around 30 million electricity users from worse outages and tariff spikes, but it risks angering millions of domestic gas consumers and disrupting other sectors such as compressed natural gas and fertiliser production.

The broader power-system context also helps explain why the situation remains fragile. Officials have said that without RLNG, about 5,000MW of efficient plants in Punjab become either uneconomical or difficult to run on substitute fuels, while furnace oil and diesel generation carry a far higher cost. At the same time, hydropower relief is not automatic even after rainfall because dam releases, reservoir management and operational issues at major assets such as Neelum-Jhelum and Tarbela shape how much low-cost electricity is actually available to the grid when demand surges.

For Pakistan, the impact goes well beyond inconvenience at home. The government has argued that the original peak-hour plan was designed to prevent roughly Rs3 per unit in additional pressure on tariffs, and warned that without curbs the increase might have reached Rs5 to Rs6 per unit. But longer-than-announced outages also hit small businesses, workshops, traders and service providers that depend on predictable evening supply, while repeated changes in official messaging can weaken public confidence in energy management at a time when inflation, fuel costs and summer demand are all under scrutiny.

The next few days will now be a test of whether the government can stabilise supply without deepening either public anger or tariff pain. Officials say improved dam outflows and better RLNG availability could ease the situation, and the president’s intervention has added pressure for feeder-wise transparency and tighter oversight of declared schedules. Even so, until fuel availability and low-cost generation recover in a meaningful way, Pakistan’s power managers appear headed for a period of careful balancing rather than a quick return to uninterrupted supply.