Reform projects in 1,420 cities
Technical losses eating into power pie
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 21
The Electricity Act has obviously failed to prevent power losses in India, with 34 per cent of the total generated power being wasted to technical and commercial losses.

The government data show that the level of power losses remains unacceptably high despite reforms and laws being in place to curb them.

Alarmed by the situation, the Ministry Of Power has now sanctioned the first round of projects under the Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme, which seeks to reduce commercial and technical losses from 34 per cent to 15 per cent by the end of the plan period.

“We have already sanctioned projects to the tune of Rs 880 crore for 1,420 cities of the country. The projects have been sanctioned for Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Haryana,” minister of state for Power Jairam Ramesh said replying to a query on high degree of power losses in Parliament yesterday. He said the government was committed to reduce aggregate commercial and technical losses to 15 per cent by the end of the 11th Plan.

Cornered on the issue of privatisation of power distribution, which was causing even greater losses than in normal cases, the government admitted that the two districts, where the power distribution had been fully privatized, were in fact reporting unacceptably high-levels of technical losses.

“In Orissa the losses are in excess of 40 per cent. The figure is over 50 per cent for Delhi. These are only two states where power distribution is fully privatised now,” Ramesh said.

PSU tariffs

The government is examining why PSUs like the National Thermal Power Corporation remained handicapped when bidding for tariff based projects. Recently, NTPC lost the Jharkhand Ultra Mega Power Project to a private bidder who quoted lesser tariff than it. As per the government policy, all power projects in India - public or private - would be awarded on the basis of tariff-based competitive bidding by 2011. “Considering our policy, the disadvantage which PSUs face must be removed urgently. I agree they face some problems,” Jairam Ramesh said.