The power utilities of southern States have come to an understanding for evolving a simple mechanism for utilising surplus power of one State to meet shortage in another, with the help of Southern Regional Load Despatch Centre.
The decision was taken at the Southern Region Power Committee (SRPC) meeting held here on Monday and presided over by Chairman and Managing Director of TS-Genco and Transco D. Prabhakar Rao. He explained the need for an agreement among the southern States for coordination in power supply.
Member-Secretary S.R Bhatt, Karnataka Transco MD Javed Akthar, Kerala State Electricity Board CMD K. Ellangovan, Tamil Nadu Transco MD S. Shanmugam, AP Transco Co-Director Nagaraju Swamy, Karnataka Power Company MD T.H.M. Kumar, SRLDC General Manager G. Anbunesan, Telangana SPDCL CMD G. Raghuma Reddy, NPDCL CMD A. Gopal Rao, Transco Joint MD C. Srinivas Rao and other senior officials from the five States attended the meeting.
The power utilities decided to simplify guidelines and procedures to enable member -States to purchase power from a surplus State and decided to have a high-level committee headed by Mr. Bhatt to prepare guidelines. They also decided to cooperate with one another in power generation, distribution and supply.
Once the new mechanism was in place, the States with shortage or surplus would inform the position to the SRLDC through online and the agency would then ensure supply of power from surplus State to deficit State, with the whole process getting completed in the matter of an hour or less. The existing system is such that the surplus and deficit States have to do the transactions only through the Power Exchange by giving information in advance, at least by a day.
A State having surplus power on a particular day for any reason could not benefit from the position in the present system leading to financial loss. Since the forecast on energy consumption could go wrong sometimes, the States having surplus generation are being forced to back down from generation and also pay fixed charges at the same time due to lack of a system to dispose off such surplus power, even if there was necessity in another member-State, the officials who attended the meeting explained.
However, the new system would help the States cope up either with surplus or deficit power without going into agreements from time to time as they would enter into mutual agreements for power transactions on the rates decided by the Power Exchange.
A special portal and WhatsApp group would also be created for exchange of information of surplus and deficit power position among the member States.
As the system would be mutually beneficial to all SRPC States, the members States readily agreed for evolving a new mechanism.
Draft guidelines of the new mechanism would be discussed at another SRPC meeting planned in Kerala on August 20.
