(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Based on 2012-13 data on cane crushing and sugar production released by the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association and assuming a 30pc average yield rate of bagasse from crushed sugarcane, 15m tonnes of bagasse were available in that year to potentially produce about 1,500MW electricity.
Facilitated by the 'Framework for Power Co-generation 2013' and other official policies, all stakeholders appear to have geared up to play a positive role in setting up bagasse-based power co-generation plants with high pressure boilers, with the Alternate Energy Development Board (AEDB) and Nepra processing documents on a fast-track basis.
The AEDB has already issued letters of intent (LoIs) to seven or possibly more investors and sugar mills, while Nepra has also started issuing generating licences to sugar mills and potential investors. The regulator issued up-front tariff on May 29, 2013, and decided that the option for accepting the up-front tariff by co-generation projects will be applicable up to May 28, 2015. So far, three sugar mills with total installed capacity of 102MW have accepted the up-front tariff.
Currently, a number of large business and industrial groups either directly or indirectly own more than one sugar mill.
They are thus better placed to finance, install and operate high pressure boilers and modern generators.
Due to information gap regarding existing installed capacity for power generation, a reasonable guess could be made by assuming that each mill, on average, produces 9MW power using bagasse available during the cane crushing season.
On this basis, the total generation of the 80 or so operative sugar mills would be 720MW.
According to a recent report by Nepra, about 16 sugar mills are supplying nearly 120MW power to discos.
Perhaps other sugar mills are not able or presently willing to supply surplus power to Discos.
With high pressure boilers, each sugar mill is assumed to produce 15MW from bagasse, leading to potential aggregate capacity of all sugar mills at 1,200 MW.
Thus, with the installation of high pressure boilers, additional capacity of around 480MW could become available for sale to the national grid.
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