I Have a D(ata)ream

I was on a phone call with my friend Salman when he asked me how long my master’s in energy engineering would take to complete. ‘About a year’, I said to which he responded, ‘Don’t come back to Pakistan’. In that moment, I asked myself a question. What reasons are there to come back to Pakistan? And where is our energy policy and development heading?

Now that the dust has settled on the issue of taxation of rooftop solar panels, it is time for us to ask a very important question. We know what Pakistan does not intend to do. But do we know what it intends to do? Are our circular debt, load shedding and chronic energy sector issues here to stay for the foreseeable future?

These are important and pertinent questions. At a time when many developing countries are achieving records level of green energy in their energy systems, we’re still clueless as to what we intend to do. Whether to burn coal, LNG, diesel or seek China’s help for another nuclear project. In 2013 elections, PMLN’s manifesto was very much energy sector related, and rightly so, as we had peak levels of loadshedding at that time. They built additional powerplants and injected some much needed energy into the system.

However, there could be an argument that as much as the powerplants (if not more), Pakistan would have benefited from an enhanced transmission and distribution network because our current infrastructure has very high level of transmission and distribution losses.

NEECA, NEPRA, NTDC, WAPDA, CPPA-G, DICSOs. These aren’t just some random words I’m throwing around. These are organisations with (competent?) people working for them. These are organisations that produce electricity, purchase electricity, transmit electricity and sell electricity. One would think that with so many organisations, Pakistan would maybe have a better clue as to what is needed to be done. Instead, we have false promises of 10,000 MW of solar which are yet to be fulfilled.

Now the next question here is what can Pakistan do? What are other governments and organizations looking to move away from dirty carbon dioxide intensive energy doing? And how have they reached their targets? There is an answer. And it is called data. In an era of digitization, and now AI, research institutes and organisations world over are working on really impressive research to help lead the energy transition. For instance, the field of energy systems modeling particularly stands out as it uses data science combined with energy systems modelling to help find the answers to the problems.

An example of it would be to feed in the data of existing power plants, transmission and distribution capacities and load profile for a country (or a region) and ask the model to create a power dispatch plan which reduces the cost for the whole systems. It sounds pretty easy and to an extent it is. There is an free open-source optimization tool known as PyPSA which has been built for exactly that.

At my studies, I had the chance to learn the above-mentioned optimization tool. In one of my course projects, we asked ourselves a simple question, how would a zero-carbon dioxide emissions energy system model look like for Pakistan given its existing infrastructure? How much solar power or wind power could be installed and how much more transmission capacity would need to be built up? While I would not want to quote any of the data results we gathered, as they included several simplifications due to lack of availability of any useful data for Pakistan, it did make me realize how these models can help Pakistan make better decisions and how Pakistan still lacks an ability to leverage this field.

Pakistan does not require the help of studies by leading international organisations like The World Bank or Asian Development Bank to create road maps. It can actually look into research and the open models available to get an understanding of the pathway it can follow. That is not to say that these models paint an accurate picture for there is a very famous saying ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful’.

These models, combined with data science are quite powerful. They can narrow down the eligible land for installation of solar power and based on weather data, give us an idea of the potential of energy that can be generated throughout their lifetime. They can identify bottlenecks in transmission and distribution network and make suggestions on the expansion of grid networks. And these models can be fed financial data as well and they then make suggestions based on which decisions could me made as to which technology would cost the least throughout its lifetime. These models can also be fed in emissions targets and the models would take that factor into account as well.

If Pakistan were to use these models, it could see where it can best use its resources for the energy sector. These analyses would open Pakistan to ideas like mini grids, micro grids or even stand alone systems in remote regions. As to what these mean, I would leave for the reader to search by themselves and understand for the sake of this article’s length. However, these have proven to be really effective for electrification of regions where main grid connections are less effective.

In my previous article, I talked about decoupling politics from our energy sector. In this one, I talked about a practical approach Pakistan could take. However, is anyone really motivated enough in our country to see a greener, brighter future? Or will we open another NAB case against the very people who have done anything remotely useful for our energy sector? One would hope…