With the elections looming in 2018, the government has taken the decision of making payments in full for power projects of 6,020 megawatts capacity which are expected to be added to the national grid by end of this year. The government wants to ensure an end to power outages before the elections next year and the Prime Minister has taken a specific interest and is keeping an eye on various power projects which he wants to be completed by the end of this year.
The Prime Minister has directed the authorities to ensure completion of 11 power projects before the end of June this year having cumulative capacity of 3242MW capacity. The major power plants in this list are the LNG based Haveli-Bahadur Shah and Bhikki project, having capacities of 800MW and 760MW respectively. The other notable ones are 315MW Chashma Nuclear and 660MW Sahiwal coal fired power plant.
Aside the Neelum-Jhelum power plant which is not expected to start generation of electricity by end of this year, another 14 power plants are expected to be added to the national grid in the above mentioned period. According to the source, the Balloki LNG based power plant will add a cumulative 800MW of electricity into the national grid by August or September and 660MW Sahiwal coal based power plant will be completed by the end of December, alongside 400MW each unit of Bhikki, Balloki and Haveli Bahadur Shah.
