26 July 2011
Merinews
Scrap non transparent generation policy - White Paper by PSEB Engineers Association
V K Gupta

PSEB Engineers Association released a White Paper on state governments' non-transparent generation policy and observed a two-hour pen down strike.

PSEB Engineers Association today released a White Paper on Punjab Government's generation policy and power engineers working in PSPCL and PSTCL through out state including engineers of Lehra Mohabatt, Bhatinda and Ropar thermal plants observed two hour "Pen-Down Tool Down" strike to lodge its protest against delay by the Punjab Government to approve 1320 MW thermal plant under state sector and demanded scraping of generation policy.

HS Bedi President PSEB Engineers Association said that instead of giving approval to the project, unnecessary correspondence is exchanged between power secretariat and PSPCL indicating non-serious approach of the decision makers. He further alleged that decisions to facilitate private developers setting up thermal plants in the state are processed on supersonic speed both in the power secretariat as well in PSPCL.

The White Paper prepared by the Association claims that Punjab, which was quite comfortable on the power front till 1995 and was slightly deficit from 1995 to 2000 but thereafter the electricity availability in Punjab lagged behind the requirement. After commissioning of 600 MW Ranjit Sagar Dam in 2000 and 420 MW Lehra-Mohabbat thermal plant in 1998, it took eight years to add another 500 MW capacity with commissioning of GHTP stage II in 2008. With no generation likely to be added in another at least one & half year, the Demand-Supply gap is bound to increase.

Bhupinder Singh General secretary said due to the policy lapse of successive state governments resulting from failure to plan for capacity addition in a planned and systematic manner, PSEB had to meet its growing energy requirement by resorting to extra short term power purchase at exorbitant rates leading to financial crunch, which was then taken as the ground for not adding capacity to meet future energy requirements.

The dependence on power purchase increased every passing year and power purchase bill rising giving a major set back to the finances of power utility. Precious funds, which could have been utilized for setting up new generation capacity were instead utilized to buy high cost power from the market which resulted in putting PSEB into a debt trap.

White Paper criticises the state governments Generation Policy adopting non transparent MOU route instead of competitive bidding. Central Electricity Regulatory Commission in its statutory advice to central government has established that cost of power from plants awarded through MOU will be costlier which will be borne by the consumers.

Punjab has not planned even a single MW in state sector and as a consequence, there will be complete dominance of the private sector as the share of own generation will come down from 52% to below 19% which will be totally inadequate to manage the wide fluctuations in demand in an economical and efficient manner.