Power ministry wants to use reserve capacity to ensure 24X7 supply

The power ministry is looking to put into use its reserve capacity to ensure 24×7 power supplies across the country and has asked the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) to oversee the requisite process.

But the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) is not in favour of providing incentive based on available generation capacity. CEA chairperson Neerja Mathur told fe the power sector required to have an excess capacity in the system. ?We need to provide adequate reserves in our system. As of now, we do not have adequate reserves,? Mathur said.

A power ministry official said the government is focussed on increasing generation and has given a free hand to generators to operate even at higher plant load factor (PLF), which is the actual generation based on the demand. NTPC chairman and MD Arup Roy Choudhury said the CEA wants the NTPC to produce more power even if it is at a higher PLF, but that requires some incentives.

Plant availability factor (PAF) provides the platform for reserve power, based on which utilities like NTPC has asked for incentive. But the regulator?s draft guidelines have proposed that the incentives given to thermal power projects should be linked to PLF and not PAF.

PAF is the declared capacity or the total generation capacity of a plant.

With CERC declaring incentives based on PLF, NTPC has already argued that it will suffer a loss of R7,000 crore. ?This would be disincentive to the power sector discouraging the concept of reserve power,? an NTPC official said.

?Spinning reserve is a concept and the regulator will have to determine how will it be paid for. Once CERC comes up with the final regulation I hope it will address the issue,? Mathur said. She said while reserve power was one of the focal points the government was pursuing; open access was an important parameter. ?Transmission needs to provide flexibility to provide for open access,? she said adding that substantial transmission capacity has not been added so far to provide for open access.

However, capacity addition has taken a faster track which will facilitate reserve capacity. Mathur said the 12th plan has targeted adding 88,000 mw but 20,000 mw has already been added in the first year of the plan period and in the second year more or less the same.

This was a remarkable improvement in terms of capacity addition since 20,000 mw was added in the entire 10th plan period, she said.

She said the entire capacity addition in the 13th plan period has been envisaged to be super critical based.