Bring back hydropower.

Byline: Khaleeq Kiani

THE discussion about the future power generation and its affordability remains subdued as the authorities concerned firm up the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan 2047.

Despite initial costs and long gestation periods, hydropower plants have almost no fuel cost and have operational lives of over a century. New hydropower plants generate electricity at Rs6-10 per unit compared to thermal power plants' Rs15-25 per unit. All other power-generating technologies have up to 30 years of project life and need up to four times expensive plant replacements in foreign exchange.

Hydropower has the lowest life-cycle cost of any generation technology. Hydropower is a potential life-saver for Pakistan. Yet its development has been hampered for decades. Hence, only 15 per cent of Pakistan's over 60,000MW hydropower potential has been developed in 70 years. This hostility, despite sporadic government interest, continues.

On the other hand, powerful lobbies backed the construction of thousands of megawatts of public-sector power plants that burn imported fuels. They are developed with massive policy breaches and out-of-turn privileges. The fact remains that the country now faces a power surplus after highly expensive surplus RLNG generation replaced costly furnace oil generation.

Under power policies, power plants can be visualised as leased vehicles - the monthly lease amount must be paid whether the vehicle is used or not. But it is rare to pay the fuel cost when the vehicle is not being used. That is unique with the design of RLNG plants of thousands of megawatts.

Hydel projects with approved sites and available finances are being pushed back in favour of wind and solar plants that have no sponsors, planning or grid evacuation studies

Wind and solar are intermittent technologies reliant solely on weather. They can at best supplement but not replace hydropower which, amongst others, can provide a range of valuable services, including frequency control, grid balancing, water storage, quick start and peaking services not inherent in wind and solar generation.

Hydropower projects that have approved sites, available finances, approved tariffs and strong sponsors are being pushed back, thus effectively killing them in favour of renewables (mainly wind, solar and small hydro) that still have no sponsors, sites, financing, planning or grid evacuation studies.

It makes no sense to abandon large privately funded hydropower projects...