Power minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Thursday announced that creating more players in the power equipment-manufacturing sector would be one of the major areas of his initiatives in the coming months.
Speaking at a conference on ?India Electricity-2007? in the Capital, the minister said lack of adequate domestic manufacturing capacity of generation equipment has been a major bottleneck in the way of timely completion of power projects, therefore, creating more players in the field is the only way to increase capacities, bring in cost-competitiveness and accountability to timelines.
Shinde also said that the government was planning to put in place an IT-enabled energy accounting system for reducing transmission and distribution (T&D) losses by more than half in the next five years.
?There is a plan to establish a state-of-the-art IT-enabled energy accounting system all over the country to reduce aggregate technical and commercial losses of around 35% to a much more respectable level of 15%? he said.
The system would monitor how much power is supplied and consumed, he said, adding that power theft would soon be a thing of the past.
Besides, an upgraded accelerated power development and reform programme (APDRP) would be put in place soon which would help to upgrade the distribution system, minimising T&D losses, improving metering and assigning responsibility for realisation of user charges.
On ultra mega power projects, Shinde said requests for qualification (RFQ) for Tilaiya plant in Jharkhand were being re-invited while the first stage of bidding for Krishnapatnam plant in Andhra Pradesh would be completed in a couple of months. This was being done to accommodate the new norms for eligibility introduced after the dispute over Sasan project.
Inviting private investment in the power sector, Shinde said capacity addition of 78,000 mw by 2012 was not too ambitious a target as projects of a total capacity of 50,000 mw were already under implementation.