From October 14 to 15, there was a conference of Power and New & Renewable Energy Ministers of States & UTs at Udaipur, Rajasthan. The central theme of the conference included focus on Financial Viability & Sustainability of Distribution Sector, Modernization & Upgradation of Power Systems, and Development of Power Systems to ensure 24×7 power supply including investment requirement & Power Sector Reforms.
In India, it is a perennial story that the distribution sector fails to generate sufficient revenue to make the power sector sustainable, thus considering the critical role of this sector in ensuring financial and operational sustainability across the power sector value chain, it has been emphasized to take effective steps towards reduction of Aggregated Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses, ensuring cost reflective tariffs, accounting of subsidy & timely payment of subsidy by state governments, clearance of outstanding dues of State Government departments and adherence to Electricity (Late Payment Surcharge and Related Matters) Rules, 2022 for timely payment of dues to generating companies etc.
Although it is an old wine in new bottle, nowadays technologies have matured enough to address the weaknesses of distribution systems. For reduction of AT&C losses, it has been agreed to expedite deployment of Prepaid Smart Metering for consumers and System Metering for establishing energy accounting systems.
Everything sounds good, however, we should not forget that whether the scenario will change or not that will not only depend on the technologies but also on their effective deployment.
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