Transforming Pakistan’s Power Sector: From Centralised Grids To Consumer-Focused Energy |
“People and their managers are working so hard to be sure things are done right that they hardly have time to decide if they are doing the right things.” (Stephen Covey)
The days of running the power sector through a centralised grid are over. This business is undergoing a fundamental transformation, unleashed by technology, economic, and environment-driven forces. Consequently, almost all aspects of this century-old business have come under tight scrutiny and severe criticism—its physical infrastructure, institutional structure, operating model, regulatory framework, pricing, performance, and control—and have become targets of reform.
A new approach is sinking in the policy and decision-making circles: to wade through turbulent times and remain solvent and profitable, the focus must now shift to the end of the value chain, the end-users of their service, “consumers.”
Infrastructure industries, once thought to be the exclusive domain of the state due to their capital-intensive, natural monopoly, and public-service nature, could not remain immune to the market forces that pushed them towards deregulation and competition. First to fall was public transport, then the airline industry, and later the telephone industry. Electric utilities, considered the last bastion of such industries, resisted any major change, except for some guided competition here and some choice there, but they too could not survive the market’s onslaught.
Multiple factors have acted to shatter the foundation of this century-old business. Smaller generators with cost and performance features that beat those of their large-sized competitors set this trend in motion. Other developments, like electric vehicles (EVs), EV-driven demand for compact battery packs, and smart grid technologies, reinforced this trend further. The advent of small, modular, and competitive generation technologies like distributed solar, however, dealt the death blow to this behemoth.
Pakistan’s 27th Amendment: Centralised Power, Judicial Upheaval And Military Dominance
Consumers could not have been happier. After a century of remaining captive to their local grids, they now had choice.........