Pakistan is among the countries that suffer from severe shortage of electricity all the year round. During periods of supply-demand gap the DISCOs cut down power supply to consumers which as referred to as load shedding. Load shedding is also enforced in hospitals and they face long power outages particularly during summer season when the electricity consumption increases due to the high usage of ACs and refrigerators etc. Many public hospitals either do not have backup supply generators or the fuel to keep the hospital operational during hours of load shedding. Cutting down power supply to a hospital paralyzes its entire operation because all the diagnostic and monitoring equipment stops working. Not only this, it often results in the loss of lives when the respirators, ventilation machines and incubators stop working. Sometimes there is no electricity even for the ICUs and the emergency service at hospitals is also discontinued leaving the patients helpless [1]. Due to increasing number of deaths every year, massive strikes are carried out that demand the authorities to exempt hospitals from load shedding policy[2].However government does not pay heed to such demands and people continue to lose their loved ones.  

To alleviate this problem we propose the idea of donating electricity to hospitals by saving it at homes and commercial buildings. Our solution requires everyone to save electricity at homes by using energy efficient appliances, turning off air conditioners during few hours of day, changing environmental set-points (e.g. operating ACs at higher temperature) and by employing automatic load control to turn off appliances during periods of no occupancy. The electricity collectively saved by a neighborhood can be donated to hospitals and they may be exempted from scheduled load shedding. This will help in saving lives of many people like patients in intensive care units, undergoing a critical surgery, or women in labor rooms, receiving an emergency treatment.

Our solution requires the power utilities and consumers to join hands to solve this problem. It will require instrumenting homes with a system that can be used for intelligent distribution of electricity to homes. The system will limit the supply of electricity to residences who are ready to reduce their electricity consumption and donate energy from their share to the hospitals during peak usage hours. During the periods of limited electricity the donor customers will only receive low power that cannot be used to operate high-power appliances but only a single or two low power appliances. Their remaining share goes to hospitals so their normal operations could be continued. For those customers who are unwilling to participate in electricity donation program will be disconnected from grid during load shedding hours because they do not cut down their electricity usage throughout the day and are already willing to accept full blackouts.

However we believe that with the help of automatic load control mechanism incorporated in our application and the suggestions provided by the app, all customers can save some energy to be donated to hospitals as that electricity currently goes wasted due to lack of careful use. Moreover after seeing its positive impact people not willing to initially participate will also be convinced to contribute energy for hospitals.

[1] https://www.dawn.com/news/1291688

[2] https://tribune.com.pk/story/555229/doctors-ultimatum-stop-power-outages-at-hospitals-in-three-days/