The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has ordered K-Electric to immediately halt unannounced, unscheduled and excessive load shedding in Karachi, ruling that the utility cannot cut electricity to entire feeders simply because of high aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses.

The regulator’s prohibitory order came after it found that K-Electric continued with excessive and discriminatory power outages even after an earlier penalty of Rs50 million was imposed for similar violations.

NEPRA's action followed a surge in consumer complaints raised during its monthly fuel price adjustment hearings, prompting an investigation into K-Electric's load-shedding practices across the city.

The regulator looked at data from 620 feeders with about 2.37 million consumers and found that real outages often went well over K-Electric’s proclaimed thresholds.

For very-high-loss feeders, serving about 1.18 million consumers, average daily outages were recorded at 12 hours and 14 minutes against a scheduled limit of 10 hours, NEPRA said. Up to 91.1 per cent of feeders exceeded the prescribed limit.

Average outages for high-loss feeders were 10 hours and 39 minutes, 81.9 per cent were over 10 hours. Feeders with medium loss also exceeded the six-hour limit with 68.4 per cent suffering outages of six hours or more.

NEPRA said that electricity curtailment is only legally permissible in cases of technical constraints, system emergencies, generation shortage or transmission related. Load shedding cannot be justified on the basis of commercial considerations, revenue recovery and loss reduction, it said.

The authority directed K-Electric to replace collective feeder level action with targeted enforcement against individual defaulters and electricity thieves along with intensified anti-theft campaigns and installation of aerial bundled cables in high loss areas.

K-Electric has been given a time period of 30 days to provide a time-bound plan for installation of aerial bundled cable and a detailed compliance report.

The utility said it had noted the order and was studying its contents before filing a response within the stipulated time.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)