The Maharashtra government, under attack for its inability to tackle the rising mismatch between power demand and supply, is being forced to draw costly power, ranging from Rs 8.50 to Rs 12 per unit. The cabinet sub-committee, headed by chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, has given its approval to the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MahaVitaran) to purchase such power in the months to come.
The decision was taken after energy minister Dilip Walse-Patil talked about the ground reality wherein the daily power deficit was around 5,000mw and was expected to increase further. Walse-Patil told the sub-committee that drawal of costly power to tide over the situation was one of the options or else the MahaVitaran would be forced to increase the hours of load-shedding, especially in rural and non-urban areas.
Thus, the sub-committee has given its nod to purchase nearly 400mw of gas liquid fuel-based power on round-the-clock basis from NTPC’s Kawas project or 150mw from the Kayamkulam project. Besides, it has allowed MahaVitaran to draw nearly 450mw produced by various captive power plants. MahaVitaran has already filed its petition before the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission, seeking approval for the same. It has argued that it proposes to recover the cost of this power from identified industrial consumers who benefit from cancellation of the likely second staggering day of load-shedding and areas with less than 20% aggregate transmission and distribution losses.
Based on MahaVitaran?s petition, MERC has asked the former to submit data relating to the demand-supply gap, current and projected load-shedding protocol, status of feeder metering and feeder-wise load-shedding protocol.
MERC has asked MahaVitaran to submit details of its efforts to procure power from the open market and the actual contracted power for the period November 2007 to March 2008.