PESHAWAR: As temperatures soar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province is facing the worst form of power outage of its history as the power breakdown prevails for 10 to 14 hours long duration in rural areas and six to eight hours in urban areas of Peshawar Mardan, Peshawar and Swat.
People in Swat, Buner and Shangla are faced with a worse form of power outage despite paying high power bills. The frequent power outages have sparked frustration among residents, especially in the rural areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where it disappeared for 12th hours long period. Anwar Khan resident of Buner, said that they could not manage routine activities due to power outage and 12 12-hour-long power outage have badly affected their household activities. Despite KP’s vast potential for hydropower, load shedding and low voltage in districts such as Peshawar, Nowshera, Mardan, and Charsadda, Buner, Shangla, and Swat are disrupting daily life.
Muhammad Faisal resident of Buner, said that this is a total injustice with the people of Buner where people are timely paying their bills, but they are not being supplied electricity properly to manage daily activities. He said that the federal government is responsible for their worries and this attitude has caused anxiety among the people, including women and children.
Rohani Gul, another resident said that on one side, WAPDA are sending inflated bills, while on the other hand, they have deprived the people of their basic needs. Due power outage, they could not pump water from their wells and their routine activities in houses were badly affected, which would cause the people to take to the streets very soon. He said the government is not making consistent efforts to bridge the supply and demand gap during summer, many areas still experience power outages. Many residents have installed solar panels, while those who cannot afford them are forced to endure the full brunt of the outages.
According to PESCO officials, KP is currently receiving about 1,873 MW of electricity from the national grid, while demand stands at around 3,220 MW—resulting in a shortfall of 1,347 MW, managed through load management across the province. Under the Aggregate Technical and Commercial Losses (ATCL) formula, officials noted that areas with high losses—such as Bannu, rural parts of Peshawar including Warsak Road, Chagarmatti, Regi, and DI Khan district—are subjected to longer load shedding hours. “There is no load-shedding in areas like Hayatabad and Gulbahar in Peshawar due to high recovery ratios and the absence of the ‘kunda’ (illegal connection) culture,” the official said. “The key reasons behind prolonged load shedding include electricity theft via direct hooks, an outdated power distribution system, and the lack of construction of large dams.”
Despite Pakistan’s potential to generate thousands of megawatts of hydel power, including in KP, this critical resource remains underutilised due to the flawed energy policies of past governments. Even after the previous PTI government’s slogan of building 200 dams, little progress was made. However, the current government is taking necessary measures to harness this potential, though the mistakes of decades cannot be undone in a matter of months. Local experts said that due to global warming and climate change, glaciers in our northern areas are melting rapidly. Constructing dams is essential to store this water for domestic and agricultural use.
He said numerous sites on rivers in KP are ideal for constructing dams, particularly small and medium ones, to tap into the province’s 30,000 MW hydel power potential. The government official said that the Asian Development Bank has assisted WAPDA in completing the design and feasibility study for Kurram Tangi Dam (Stage-II), a large-scale project capable of storing around 1.2 million acre-feet of water and generating 80.9 MW of electricity.
They noted that the 108 MW Golen Gol Dam in Chitral has been completed, while work on the 800 MW Mohmand Dam on the Swat River—with a storage capacity of 1.293 MAF—has been expedited. “This mega dam will help irrigate 160,000 acres of existing land and around 18,237 acres of new land, offering annual benefits of Rs2.23 billion,” he said.
Additionally, he stated that the Mohmand Dam will provide 300 million gallons of drinking water per day to Peshawar and protect Peshawar, Charsadda, and Nowshera from floods. The construction work on the Dasu Hydropower Project on the Indus River in Kohistan is underway. “The project will be developed in two stages. Stage-I will generate 2,160 MW, while Stage-II, expected to be completed in five years, will add another 2,160 MW.” Meanwhile, a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) converter station is being built at Azakhel Bala in Nowshera district under the CASA-1000 Project, aimed at transmitting 1,300 MW of clean, low-cost electricity from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan.
According to the KP Energy Department, the 36.6 MW Daral Khwar Hydropower Project in Madain, Swat, has been completed and is expected to generate over Rs1.3 billion annually. Additionally, the 300 MW Balakot Hydropower Project—worth Rs. 85 billion and approved by ECNEC—is being developed on the Kunhar River in Mansehra, promising to be a valuable addition to the grid.Gomal Zam Dam in South Waziristan, with a storage capacity of 114,000 cubic feet of water, has started generating power and providing irrigation. With a generation capacity of 17.4 MW, the dam benefits around 25,000 households and has been formally handed over to WAPDA for operation.
The first unit of the Suki Kinari Hydropower Station—constructed on the Kunhar River in Mansehra—has successfully achieved synchronisation and begun supplying electricity to local communities. Once fully operational, the project will generate 884 MW of electricity. Experts believe that these hydropower projects will not only provide much-needed relief to consumers but also accelerate economic and agricultural growth across the country.
Read also:KP Governor urges PM to take notice of electricity, gas loadsheding
