Gridco plans to move SC against ATE order on power trading licence

Grid Corporation of Odisha (Gridco) plans to move the Supreme Court against an order of the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (ATE), which rejected the plea of the state owned utility for cancellation of the licence of a private power trader to trade inside the state.

“We are in the process of filing petition in the Supreme Court against the ATE order,” said a senior Gridco official.

The ATE on April 10 set aside a Gridco appeal to cancel the licence of private power trading firm Global Energy Private Ltd (GEPL), which intended to participate in power trading in Odisha eying large number of power projects coming up in the state and Gridco's inability to handle high volume of power.

Odisha has signed 29 PPAs with private thermal power generators who will provide about 12 to 14 per cent of their total generating capacity of 37,000 MW to the state grid by the end of 2022, the final year of 13th Five Year Plan. But considering the future need of upcoming industrial projects and the domestic sector, the state would require about 10,000 MW power after 10 years compared to the current demand of about 2,700 MW.

GEPL wants to procure the surplus amount of power and sell it to interested buyers inside the state. The New Delhi-based private firm is also interested to trade power as it wants to avail the benefits of ‘no trading margin cap’ order stipulated by Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) for intra-state power trading.

The regulator in 2010 had notified that power traders can only charge a trading margin of four paisa to seven paisa per unit depending upon power cost for transactions between states. However, the commission did not put any restriction on trading margins for selling power inside a state. The state power regulator, Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) in 2010 had permitted GEPL to trade in the state through a licence, which was contested by Gridco. But it had lost the case and then decided to move to ATE for justice, only to fail two years later.

Gridco’s contention was that the private firm would not pass its profit to state consumers, while the state-run firm would do so by providing cheaper power, said the official.