Focus on wind-generated power

Three different organisations in Pakistan are currently conducting feasibility studies on wind-powered electricity generation. These are: the Pakistan Council of Renewable Energy Technologies (Pacret), the country's meteorological office, and the UN-led Commercialisation of Wind Power Potential in Pakistan (CWPPP).

All three have different approaches to the issue, but the bottom line remains the same: whether or not windmill energy is a viable commercial option for the hundreds of thousands of people living in abject poverty in the 1,120-km long coastal areas of Pakistan, too remote for the main power grid to light up their lives.

"Our lives have changed," said Muhammad Idris, the administrator of an agricultural farm in the southern Sindh Province. "This light is useful for walking at night-time, also for guarding the place," said Idris as he viewed hectares of sugar cane ready to be harvested, in the village of Deh-e Pir Jahri, 100 km from the port city of Karachi.

Idris's farm was one of the 14 selected by Pacret to erect a micro-windmill, donated by China this year. Two half-kW windmills and a smaller 300 watt windmill adorn the farm. From a distance they look like a Cessna aircraft's propellors, whirling quietly under the power of the coastal wind.

A cable connecting to a set of batteries lights up bulbs and fans, a unique treat for villagers accustomed to kerosene lamps.

"There are about 10 million people in the coastal areas, half of whom will never be on the national grid of WAPDA [Water and Power Development Authority]," Ghulam Umar Sarhandi, the director of Pacret, told IRIN in Karachi. "For these people the windmill is the best option," he added.

Small coastal villages are too expensive to be brought on the national grid because of huge infrastructure costs. Also, experts say, WAPDA does not have enough electricity to feed them.

"The only way these people can be connected to the rest of the world is through cheap power," Badruddin Abro, the assistant director at Pacret told IRIN. "Once we know what the potential is, even the private sector will come forward."

However, at this stage of research, the private sector is reluctant to invest any money on the possibility. "The private sector is showing interest, but there is no authentic wind data," Sarhandi explained.

In its initiative, the meteorology office is carrying out wind mapping, or trying to collect wind data. "We have installed 45 wind-measuring stations along the coast of Sindh and Balochistan," the office's chairman, Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

"We are trying to measure wind speed and direction at the height of 30 feet and 100 feet," he added. The data, collected over at least one year, is crucial for indicating the potential. If the possibility of commercial exploitation exists, it would automatically attract private business.

Chaudhry said so far the data-collection, started in April this year, shows that the potential of generating power cheaply through windmills exists.

However, apart from the potential, logistics constitute the main challenge that any development activity will face in the coastal areas. "The area is very difficult and roads do not exist," Chaudhry said, explaining that both the government and private sector would have to overcome these difficulties if they planned to set up windmill farms.

The CWPPP was launched in 2000 by the United Nations Office for Project Services in collaboration with the government's energy conservation programme. Wind data collection commenced in December 2001. "Our objective is to find out the potential and afterwards to exploit that potential," Asif Qayum Qureshi, the national coordinator of the project, told IRIN in Islamabad.

Qureshi said as a first step a detailed wind-resource assessment and a financial and technical feasibility study was being undertaken. There will also be an environmental and operational evaluation of a potential demonstration of a wind farm, which will later be developed in partnership with the private sector.

The aim of the project is to examine whether a 10MW- to 15-MW-powered windmill farm can be set up in the harbour town of Pasni in Balochistan Province. The current installed electricity generation capacity at Pasni of about 15 MW is based on diesel-power generation and demand is expected to grow by 11 percent annually. The town's population is estimated at 50,000.

"The project, if set up, will directly reduce consumption of diesel fuel at the existing power plant by up to 13,205 mt per year, and decrease associated carbon-dioxide emissions by at least 42,522 mt per year," Qureshi explained.

There will be additional savings due to a reduction in the cost of transporting diesel fuel to the power plant from Karachi, 300 km away.

Qureshi said wind power generation was not just cheaper but also environmentally friendly.

"Wind energy is a clean resource as there are no carbon monoxide or other environmentally damaging emissions from wind energy plants," Qureshi noted. "If the project is successful, it can obviate the need for thermal generation in coastal areas."