ISLAMABAD – The summer will again be tough for the Pakistani consumers whowill continue to endure outages.

“In order to implement a load-shedding schedule, the government has dividedelectricity consumers into two categories,” said a senior governmentofficial.

In the first category, the jurisdictions served by electricity feeders thathave less than 10% transmission and distribution losses will face noload-shedding. These feeders serve 14.92 million or 60.72% consumers acrossthe country.

In the second category, the feeders, where losses are estimated in therange of 10% to 20% and which serve 21.7% of consumers, the duration ofload-shedding will be two to four hours in the summer season of the currentyear.

The government official revealed that the National Power Control Centre(NPCC) and power distribution companies had expected that average growth inconsumer demand would range from 10% to 13% in 2018 compared with theaverage demand in 2017.

He said the level of shortfall would vary from 5% to 7% from March toOctober 2018.

During peak hours, the government has planned to cope with the shortfall byutilising water in dams in a bid to generate more hydroelectric power tomeet the high demand.