One of main reasons because the people choose PML-N in general elections of 2013 was that they were fed up with load shedding and the empty promises made by Zardari led PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party) government. People had to bare 8 to 12 hours of load shedding in whole tenure of of PPP.
However, a main pillar of the election campaign of PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz) was to end the load shedding. Now load shedding in Pakistan do not entirely happen due to the lack of Power Generation Plants but a big factor in this regard is circular debt. The debt payable each month by WAPDA to firstly the fuel providers like PSO and secondly to Individual (private) Power Plants (IPPs). Now wapda is the main distributor of electricity in all over country and working with several sub entities to distribute electricity in each city like IESCO in Islamabad and LESCO in Lahore etc.
Now circular debt happens each month when WAPDA (Water and Power Development Authority) and its entities are unable to do the recoveries efficiently against the distributed power. Reason for those inefficient recoveries range from line losses to electricity theft.
When in 2013 PML-N took charge that circular debt was about 400 to 500 billion. They approached the problem of load shedding with respect to less power houses, all energies are used there and nothing special was done to curb the debt. Now fast forwarding to 5 years later, just few days ahead of end of term of PML-N, circular debt ballooned up to massive 922 Billions.
This very fact of increasing of Circular debt from 4/5 hundred to 922 billion in five years tells the whole story as, the PML-N did not thought through. They as well kept making those empty promises. They did added several new power plants to grid. But they were unable to think about all aspect.
With circular debt this high, this is obvious that a number of power plants will not be running, reasons include, fuel suppliers will cut the supply or cut to less quantity until the outstanding dues are clear, also several IPPs will push on for payment until they get full payment.
Now here is what would have happen on May 30th 2018, when weather got hot and load shedding gone through the roof with several areas facing 8 to 10 hours, several facing 4 to 8 hours of load shedding. The heat goes up on 30th 2018, so does the demand of electricity all over country, now government is already producing less electricity due to less fuel supply and shut off power plants due to circular debt, but that supply was coping with demand some how.
Now later on when heat and demand increase, it got difficult for government to meet demands with those few running power plants, so their claims face a melt down and on same time people face load shedding.
Even the zero load shedding claims of government are Mal-formed, they have actually divided feeders (Smallest distribution area unit name for electricity in Pakistan) into categories on base of line losses. The lowest losses feeders (under 10%) are Category one, 10 to 20% losses feeders are category 2, 20 to 30% come under category 3 and so on. So in cold months (which are also off-peak electricity demand months) only those feeders coming under category one had no load shedding. Category 2 had 2 hours of load shedding and third having more. Used same formula of more load shedding for feeders having higher category. Categories go up to 10.
Now line losses or theft is thing, which had to be dealt with by government. Unable to do that, they started punishing people on this and made line losses a base to do more load shedding in several areas.
So keeping in view, what we just learned in above two paragraphs, technically load shedding never ended in Pakistan in PML-N era, even in those cold months. And now in hot months, government, despite all those promises, finding it hard to cop with rising demand and hence resorting to Load Shedding once again.