Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Jun 12, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Jun 12, 2003 |
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Industry & Economy
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Power Basic changes must in power transmission, says CII Our Bureau
KOLKATA, June 11 ADMITTING that the provisions in the Central Electricity Bill, 2001, recently passed by the Rajya Sabha, are expected to usher in a more dynamic power sector, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) has suggested that fundamental changes be made in the area of transmission to make this an efficient intermediary between generation and distribution. It is felt that a licence should be mandatory for transmission activity, while the licensee should not be allowed to engage in trading in electricity. It is desirable to provide a licensee non-discriminatory open access to any licensee or generation company and to any consumer as and when open access is provided by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC). CII points out that open access be provided against payment of transmission charges as determined by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission and more than one transmission licensee be permitted in a State. It is observed that the Bill, by permitting open access to transmission and granting of multiple licences, would forestall SEBs restricting transmission of captive generated electricity and thereby unlocking the bottled capacity of captive power plants. Since the Bill permits consumers to choose their supplier, consumers would prefer to go for the lowest cost supplier. It is apprehended that SEBs may run the risk of lossing their best customers, who are so long paying a premium to cross subsidise the non-paying segments such as agriculture. But such a scenario would force the SEBs to reform, improve efficiency and charge rational tariff even to the erstwhile un-remunerative segment CII has touched on some other issues to improve the transmission and distribution mechanism. It is observed that due to technical reasons, transmission losses, which are supposed to be not more than six per cent, do go over this figure due to our lines being over 30-years-old in many parts of the country. Whereas, most of the countries in the world change their lines every 20 to 30 years and upgrade the same to slash transmission losses. CII has suggested that the distribution companies should introduce smart electric cards to arrest theft of power. These cards are normally inserted in the electric meter to start the flow of power to the consumer concerned on similar lines as the telephone cards are available internationally. The electronic metres using smart cards can be made in the country with technical collaboration by electric meter industry especially for areas where there is no large-scale theft of electric power. As far as rural supply of power is concerned, CII has suggested that the Bangladesh model may be considered under which each village will be responsible through its Panchayat and Sarpanch for the total payment of power to that village. As far as town and cities are concerned, there could be privatisation of distribution as is being done, for example, in New Delhi.
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