Reforms in Power sector.

Central Govt announced Rs.90K cr rescue package for power gencos through PFC and REC.But PRAAPTI ( Payment Ratification And Analysis in Power procurement for bringing Transparency in Invoicing of generators) website shows that the total overdue amount to be paid to Gencos stood at Rs.113.8K cr at the end of May 2020 continuously going up for the last 18 to 24 months. The total outstandings were Rs.125.6K cr.link.

Apart from this, there is renewable energy generation pending to be adjusted against captive consumption of factories which is not yet visible.This may be another iceberg submerged.

After clearing Rs.90K cr.as per GOI plan  stated above, how the state discoms are going to manage their future liabilities.

With a negative gap between Average Cost of Supply(ACS) and Average Revenue Realised at Re.0.41 per unit on an All India basis, it is a losing game. AT & C loss is also still very high at 18.72%link.UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana) commitments lie in tatters.

All the UDAY Targets remain unfulfilled. The website says there are no newsletter releases after Jan 2019 and that sums up the state of affairs under UDAY. UDAY is now Asthamana.It looks like an orphan.

Targets on All India basis set were:

Feeder Metering                                   30th June 2016 
DT Metering                                          30th June 2017
AT&C Losses                                        15% by FY 2019
Consumer Indexing & GIS Mapping      30th Sep 2018
Upgradation of DT,Meters etc.              31st Dec 2017
Smart meter for Consumers                >500 units by Dec 2017;>200 units by Dec 2019
Elimination of ACS-ARR gap                 FY 2019

Smart metering completion is at 6% - 7%  on All India basis as per the website UDAY.in whereas , it should have been completed  100% by Dec 2019 according to the Targets set.

Are there methods amidst madness to come out of this mess?. There are practical methods to bring down AT &C loss by upgrading the cable quality.adoption of smart metering etc. But the easiest way to do is by horizontal deployment across states. State of Himachal Pradesh has the lowest AT &C at 5.62%. There are great lessons for other states to learn from them. The lowest gap between ACS and ARR is in Gujarat at just 4 paise. This will open the eyes of other States.This cross fertilisation of ideas is the way forward to healthy federal competition.

Many political parties give electoral promises of free electricity to farmers to win elections and in the guise of farmers many use free electricity even for their farm houses. This misuse is rampant across India.

The best way to counter this is to transfer subsidy given to marginal farmers to their Jan dhan account and charge uniformly for agri sector. Another method could be charge 10 paise for a unit for agri activity instead of calling it free and increase this tariff every year by indexing it to CPInflation for those agriculturists consuming more than 1000 units per annum.