25,000 MW hydropower projects in pipeline, out of country's 54000 MW potential: WAPDA

[Naveed Yaseen]

LAHORE: The Water & Power Development Authority (WAPDA) is striving for optimal exploitation of hydropower potential to cope with the increasing demand of electricity in the country, said chairman Shakil Durrani.

According to an official statement, he said this during his visit to the project sites of Diamer-Basha Dam and Dasu, Pattan and on-going three high-head hydropower projects namely Khan, Allai and Dubair Khwar Thursday.

The Chairman said that nature has blessed Pakistan with the potential of generating more than 54,000MW of hydel electricity. With a view to inject low-cost electricity in the National Grid, WAPDA is working on feasibility studies and detailed engineering designs of a number of hydropower projects with accumulative capacity of about 25,000MW including Kohala (1,100MW), Bunji (5,400MW) and Dasu (4,000MW), he said.

“The feasibility study of Dasu hydropower project is expected to be completed in October this year, adding that rest of the studies are also at the advance stages of their completion and most of the projects would be available for construction by the next year,” he said adding that the multi-purpose Diamer-Basha Dam and run-of-the river Dasu hydropower project would contribute more than 18,000 and 19,000 Gigawatt hours electricity annually to the national grid, respectively. On this occasion, shakil was briefed that Khwar projects of 323MW would start power generation one by one from 2009 onwards. staff report

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