The Federal Government launched a Matiari-Lahore High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Transmission Line on Friday to cover the electricity needs of Lahore. Matiari town in Sindh will be lighting up homes and industry in the heartland of Punjab. The transmission line will take electricity from the Thar coal power project to consumers in Punjab.
Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar, addressing the virtual inauguration of high-power testing of 660kV Matiari-Lahore HVDC Transmission Line project being witnessed simultaneously in Pakistan and China, said early completion of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects was of utmost importance for Pakistan.
He said the Matiari-Lahore HVDC project was now successfully starting high power transmission.
The transmission line would evacuate power from power plants located in Sindh to the North load centers.
Speaking on the occasion Chinese Ambassador Nong Rong congratulated NTDC Pakistan and State Grid Corporation of China for the successful completion of high power test for Matiari-Lahore HVDC Project.
He said: “Matiari-Lahore high voltage transmission line is the first HVDC transmission project in Pakistan, devoting itself to address the bottleneck of electricity transmission from south to north and upgrading the layout of Pakistan national grid.”
He said over 1,300 Chinese engineers and technicians along with 6500 Pakistani workers overcame the impact of the pandemic and intensively worked together. They successfully made it into the new phase of trial run operation in spite of the difficulties.