LAHORE: The load shedding continues in Lahore as electricity demand rises with the intense heat, while complaints of technical faults and transformer failures have registered an alarming increase.
According to sources, incidents of transformer failure have increased in densely populated areas of the city, as a result of which consumers are forced to remain without electricity for several hours at a stretch.
Densely populated localities carry a compounding disadvantage during heat waves. Distribution transformers in these areas typically serve more connections than their original design contemplated, as informal construction has added floors and households without corresponding upgrades to the distribution network. When ambient temperatures rise and every connection simultaneously draws air-conditioning and cooling load, the thermal stress on an already overloaded transformer frequently exceeds what it can sustain.
Sources said that during daytime hours, electricity demand remains comparatively lower because of solar systems. LESCO’s daytime electricity demand remains between 3,500 and 3,700 megawatts. However, at night, with solar generation ending, pressure on the system increases.
The daytime-to-night differential described here reflects one of the most significant structural changes in Pakistan’s electricity landscape in recent years. Widespread adoption of rooftop solar by households and commercial consumers has materially reduced daytime demand on the distribution network — but solar output falls to zero after sunset, precisely when residential cooling load peaks and remains high through the night.
According to sources, LESCO’s average electricity demand during night hours reaches up to 5,200 megawatts.
The gap between roughly 3,600 megawatts in daylight and 5,200 megawatts at night — a swing of around 1,600 megawatts — must be met by conventional generation that has to be available on short notice.
Separately, electricity generation and supply from power plants has also been affected because of the limited supply of LNG.
Liquefied natural gas fuels a significant portion of Pakistan’s efficient thermal generation capacity. Where LNG supply is constrained, plants either operate below capacity or cannot be dispatched at all, reducing the pool of generation available to meet evening peaks.
When electricity demand increases during evening and night hours, forced load shedding is initiated. In various areas, power is cut intermittently for periods of 30 minutes to one hour, while in high-loss areas the duration of load shedding has reached two to six hours.
The differentiation by loss level reflects the loss-based load management policy applied across Pakistan’s distribution companies, under which feeders with high aggregate technical and commercial losses — a measure combining line losses with unrecovered billing and theft — face longer outage durations than feeders with better recovery performance.
Citizens are facing severe difficulties because of unannounced load shedding and transformer failures during the intense heat. Extended outages during high-temperature periods carry health consequences, particularly for infants, elderly residents and those with chronic conditions, in households without backup power.
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