Muhammad Zubair is busy cutting wood at his sawmill unit, which is located in Tarkhan Market in Khar, the district headquarters of Bajaur. Today is Saturday and he has a lot of work to do. He is working fast because it is 11am and the electricity supply will be suspended by 4pm.

There is no system for installing meters of Tribal Electric Supply Company (Tesco) in Khar Bazaar. Electricity is supplied here from 8am to 4pm and the company's contractors charge each shopkeeper Rs350 to Rs1,200 per day, depending on the nature of their work.

Zubair is fed up with inflated electricity bills, short supply and long loadshedding. He says that he has to pay a fixed bill of Rs25,000 to Rs28,000 to the Tesco contractor every month. This is in addition to the workshop rent, salaries of the artisans and other expenses. There is one holiday a week.

Sometimes, if the electricity goes off due to repairs or any other reason, the whole day is lost. In such a situation, such high bills are becoming unbearable for him. 

Not only Muhammad Zubair, but also the owners of 210 saw machine units, furniture workshops, shopkeepers and hundreds of artisans working here are concerned. 

Abdul Hakeem Jan has been doing lathe work in a nearby market for the last 20 years. He has installed an electricity connection for the machine at Rs500 per day but he also often has to use a generator. 

“The government had started a mini-solar grid project here years ago. If it had been completed, we could have been saved from this unreliable electricity and the double cost of the generator.” 

A small grid not enough for 1.3m people 

Bajaur district has a population of about 1.3m where only one 132kV grid of Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) is established. The 15,000 population of the district headquarters Khar and its suburbs are getting 67MW of electricity, including an express line that provides electricity to metered commercial establishments for 23 hours on a unit basis.

However, due to the lack of meters, feeders in residential areas and markets are supplied for three hours at a time.

Khar is the largest commercial centre of Bajaur district where, according to the traders’ union, there are 3,500 shops. Among them, from milk sellers to printing press owners, are such 1,200 people whose businesses cannot operate without electricity.

In view of this situation, the Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organization (Pedo) launched a mini-solar grid project at Adil Chowk in Khar four years ago to provide uninterrupted power to businesses at subsidised rates.

For the aforementioned off-grid 175kV project, 324 solar panels of 580 watts each were installed at 10 kanals of land. The construction of the protective wall has also been completed, but power transmission from the solar project has not yet started.

Project Director Asfandyar Khattak says the Bajaur solar grid is also part of the nine mini-grids that are being installed in the merged tribal districts. Work on them started in 2019 and an amount of Rs575m was allocated for them.

All these grids were to be completed by June 2024, but work had to be stopped due to non-release of funds on time and Covid-19.

Rains posing risks after 70pc work 

Pedo Assistant Director Zulfiqar Ahmed is overseeing the mini-solar grids project. He confirms that out of the nine mini-grids in the merged districts, only Mohmand mini-grid has been made operational. Khyber mini-grid is in the final stages of completion, after which work will resume in Bajaur.

There is a distance of one kilometer between the mini-solar grid and Khar Bazaar for which a transmission line had to be laid. According to Zulfiqar, the community did not allow the transmission line to be laid along their homes, which delayed the project; however, now the line will be laid through another route where no one objects.

The delay in the project may have been due to the transmission line, but some technical issues have also come to light.

Pedo Assistant Director (Electrical) Muhammad Noman says that like other projects, the estimate for the Bajaur solar grid was Rs40m, which the government is providing from the Annual Development Programme. Overall, 70pc of the work on the grid has been completed, only the laying of the transmission line is left.

However, when the Khar Bypass Road was built, the solar grid was left very low and rainwater is not draining from here, meaning the grid can be submerged in the rain at any time.

According to Pedo officials, the installed panels will now have to be removed and the land level would have to be raised before reinstalling the panels. More funds will be required for this work, the approval of which is yet to be taken.

Cheap electricity for businesses from the mini-solar grid 

Zulfiqar Ahmed says that the solar-mini grid will be handed over to a community-based organization (CBO), which will operate it and provide electricity to businessmen at a rate much lower than the Wapda commercial rate, i.e. around Rs16 per unit. The CBO committee will include the additional deputy commissioner of Bajaur, assistant commissioner, president of the business community and general secretary. The income from the mini-grid will be spent on its operational expenses (maintenance and staff salaries). The company concerned will be responsible for the maintenance of the grid for the first two years. 

President of the Traders Union Wajid Ali Shah says that since he took office, there have been so many other problems that he has not had time to pay attention to the mini-solar grid. He does not know where this grid is being installed and what benefits it will bring to businessmen. 

However, the former president Khar bazaar union, Haji Amir Rehman, says that he made many efforts to activate the grid last year but the route of the transmission line remained a problem. “We held three meetings with the mini-grid officials and officers to find a solution, but the local administration and Pedo officials did not call any meetings. Due to this delay, business people are facing many problems.” 

Truck body maker Naimatullah says that years ago, uninterrupted free electricity was available in Khar but then contractors came and electricity became expensive. “Now they do not have the money to install generators and solar panels. Due to long loadshedding, we sometimes have to wait for hours to install a simple weld (by welding). The government should activate the grid project soon so that our problems are reduced.”

Benefits of installing personal rooftop solar system 

Tailor Master Sabz Ali Khan of Khar Bazaar is one of the lucky ones who installed solar panels at their shop three years ago. He says that earlier he used to work on Wapda electricity, but prolonged loadshedding and high bills forced him to install a solar system of his own.

“I have benefited a lot from solar. My eight workers work from 8am to 5pm without interruption. The craftsman who used to make two suits earlier now makes four, which not only gets the work done on time but also increases the number of customers.” He says he had spent Rs250,000 on the solar system, which includes eight panels and an inverter. It runs eight sewing machines and two irons easily. At that time, the panels were expensive, but now they have also become cheaper.

“I have lost my life due to the heavy electricity bill every month and spending thousands of rupees on generators, which was beyond our ability.”
Waqas Ahmed, a researcher and solar energy researcher living in Bajaur, says that due to climate change, there has been a huge loss of life and property, especially with the cloudbursts and floods this year as well.

"People all over the world are adopting environment-friendly energy, large solar parks are being built. Unfortunately, this is not being paid attention to in our tribal districts. All solar projects, including the Bajaur mini-grid, should be completed soon, which will provide cheap electricity and will not have a negative impact on the environment,” he stresses.