The New Nation - Internet Edition

THE government announced a nine-year-long roadmap some time ago for attaining a proper match between power production and its demand. Then adequate power production consistent with demand may be possible by the year 2015. But this is a far away date when the desperately required thing is the fastest addition of power from any source to the national grid. Sufficiency in power generation is needed to maintain the current levels of production in the various sectors and to give power connections to new enterprises.

Several solutions were suggested in the face of the power crunch such as buying power from neighbouring countries. But the same hit snags when it was known that they may not have surplus power to sell or considerable time would be required to get such power from across the border. Renting of movable power plants was considered. Analysing the possible ways of getting power for the grid, it was found out that the best prospect involved tapping the power generation potentials of the captive power producers (CPPs) - the industries in different sectors having their own power generation capacities created to face worsening power supply situation.

The CPPs have a combined generation capacity of some 1300 mw and much of it remains unutilised. They are therefore, in a position to spare a good amount of power after meeting their own needs to feed the national grid. No new investments in machines, equipment or land would be needed for this purpose. If government only provides them with the reasonable incentives to sell this power to it then it should be possible to get as much as 500 mw from the CPPs within a month or two. Why the power ministry is not doing everything possible to tap this source is an enigma.