Power ministry working on resource adequacy plan guidelines

The Union Power ministry was working on resource adequacy plan guidelines to ensure 24x7 power supply to the consumers, a senior official said on Wednesday.

The ministry was also discussing some bigger reforms to make discoms viable and was working on steps like de-regulating the sector or making regulation adaptability more industry friendly, the official said.

Resource adequacy is the ability of a utilities' reliable capacity resources (supply) to meet the customers' energy or system loads (demands) at all hours The factor that affects supply is the availability of sufficient dispatchable capacity resources in order to meet the demand.

A focus on 24x7 power can be ensured if discoms properly have resource adequacy in place. There are a few private players who are working in this direction. Working on resource adequacy plan guidelines so that discoms can be integrated at the state level and then more at national level. The advantage will be lesser resource requirement, Power Ministry Joint Secretary Ghanshyam Prasad said at the CII Energy Conclave.

He said the challenge given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of converting 50 per cent of energy from renewable resources by 2030, and by the same year to reduce total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes will be achieved.

Prasad urged the industry to come forward and adapt off-river hydro pump storage to integrate renewables which is not only cost competitive but has longer storage duration enabling it to meet both the peaks in a day.

He said that an Energy Storage Policy is being drafted by the Government of India and there should be knowledge of integrating the storage system into the grid.