LAHORE: The residents across the Lahore region are enduring a fresh wave of unannounced and forced load shedding, with outages stretching from half an hour to as long as six hours a day even as intense heat and stifling humidity grip the provincial capital.
According to sources familiar with the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO)’s operations, power is being switched off in rotation for periods ranging from 30 minutes to one hour in most localities under the label of “load management.” On feeders classified as high-loss, the cuts are far longer, with outages of two to six hours reported through the day and night.
The pattern is most severe after sunset. Residents in several neighbourhoods say the shutdowns begin as evening falls and continue intermittently through the night, disrupting sleep in households where fans and air conditioners are the only defence against temperatures that have hovered in the mid-thirties Celsius.
Compounding the scheduled cuts is a sharp rise in unscheduled tripping. Complaints of technical faults and burnt-out transformers have increased significantly in densely populated localities, where ageing distribution infrastructure is being pushed to its limits by sustained peak loading.
The underlying arithmetic explains much of the strain. Sources said LESCO’s daytime demand currently runs at roughly 3,500 to 3,700 megawatts, held down by the widespread adoption of rooftop solar systems that shave a substantial slice off daylight consumption. Once the sun sets and those systems go offline, demand climbs to as much as 5,200MW — a swing of about 1,500MW concentrated into the evening hours when the grid is least able to absorb it.
That evening surge is now the defining feature of Pakistan’s load curve. The rapid uptake of net-metered and off-grid solar over the past three years has reduced daytime purchases from distribution companies while leaving the night-time peak largely untouched, forcing the system to meet its highest demand at precisely the moment its cheapest daytime generation disappears.
On the supply side, sources said disruption in liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply has reduced output from gas-fired power plants, widening the gap between demand and available generation. Gas-based plants have historically served as an important source of dispatchable capacity for the national grid, and any shortfall in fuel supply translates almost immediately into curtailed generation.
LESCO is one of the country’s largest distribution companies, supplying electricity to Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib and Okara districts. Its high-loss feeder policy — under which localities with elevated theft and poor bill recovery face longer outages — remains among the most contested elements of the distribution system, as it applies collective outages to entire neighbourhoods regardless of individual consumer conduct.
No formal load-management schedule has been published for the ongoing cuts, which is precisely the grievance driving public anger. Consumers argue that an announced, evenly applied schedule would at least allow households and small businesses to plan around the shortfall.
Citizens have demanded that the unjustified interruptions be halted immediately, particularly during the current spell of heat and humidity, and that any unavoidable load shedding be notified in advance and distributed equitably across all consumer categories.
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