Optimization of hydropower for sustainable energy in Pakistan /

Abstract

With an increasing usage and demand of the technology, electricity has become a basic need of human life. Pakistan has been blessed with a lot of energy production resources (hydel, thermal, wind, solar). However, the country is not utilizing its energy production resources efficiently. Specifically, the hydel energy production resources (which are more economical) are being wasted. Because of the improper planning and less utilizing of available resources, people of Pakistan are suffering from energy crises and load shedding. Currently, the country is heavily relying on thermal based energy production whereas the hydel production resources are being less utilized. Although, Pakistan can’t fully rely on hydel energy production as it is seasonal, so an optimized mix of hydel and other energy production options has to be adopted. This work is to analyze the current and future hydel plans of Pakistan, to study the demand and production gap, and to propose an optimized energy production mix from different resources for Pakistan. It has been identified that the current energy plan (WAPDA Vision 2025) of Pakistan is not being followed in spirit. Many of the proposed projects are delayed and the country is lagging behind to overcome the energy shortfall. A modified roadmap was proposed to be followed for the completion of 2025 plan and to overcome the shortfall. Also, optimization scenarios for thermal to hydel ratio mix were suggested. The results showed that by following the proposed plan, Pakistan can overcome its energy crises fastly and the optimized mix of proposed sharings give economical production.