Implement ‘Patiala model’ to bring down losses, DISCOMS told
Manish Sirhindi
Tribune News Service

Yamunanagar/Ambala, November 5
The All-India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has suggested that the Haryana DISCOMS should adopt the “Patiala Model” to bring down the aggregate transmission and commercial (AT&C) losses which has become a major challenge for power utilities in the state.

The Haryana DISCOMS had been contemplating to hand over feeders to private franchisee to reduce AT&C losses, which had been causing a dent to the financial health of the power companies.

However, the AIPEF in its executive meeting held recently observed that feeder-wise franchisee proposed by the DISCOMS was a way to privatise the power sector of the state.

VK Gupta, a spokesperson of AIPEF, said instead of giving feeder-wise franchisee system to private players, who would be “local goons” in this case, the line losses could be reduced drastically if the government had the will to support the engineers.

He said the main reason for higher AT&C losses was theft of power by “influential” people with or without the help of field staff. The prevention of power theft could be started by shifting all domestic and commercial meters outside the premises, he added.

Gupta said the AT&C losses had been reduced in Punjab, eastern Andhra and urban Karnataka by the power sector engineers and their expertise and suggestions should be followed in the state as well to achieve reduction in line losses. Franchisee or privatisation was no solution to the problem.

He said in Patiala circle, where AT&C losses were not in higher bracket but were in range of 25 per cent, PSEB engineers had been able to reduce these losses to 14 per cent. In this case, the Punjab government and the Power Utility management lent full support to the engineers, he added.

The pilot project had incurred an expenditure of 16 crore and 233 lakh units of energy had been saved. The expected AT&C losses by the end of next financial year were likely to 12 per cent. The system reliability index had also improved to 99.75 per cent after implementing the recommendations made by the engineers in the neighbouring state, Gupta said. He said the damage rate of distribution transformers had been reduced to practically nil.

The reasons for the present situation in the power industry in the state were non-payment of full subsidies, high distribution losses and high cost of power purchased.

Though Haryana made sufficient capacity addition, the failure of Chinese units led to a large scale costly power purchase, he said. Meanwhile, the AIPEF demanded that the state government should seek expert views to improve the power sector in the state.