CEA to make public national electricity plan for 2017-22

The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) will shortly make public the national electricity plan for the five year period 2017-2022 and a perspective plan for 2022-2027, Chairman S.D. Dubey said on Sunday.

"We are working on a national electricity plan for the 13th five-year plan period and a perspective electricity plan for the 14th," Dubey said.

"By next month, we will put it on the public domain," he said.

The national electricity plan will include energy demand projections, sources from where demand can be met, transmission plan, how renewable energy sources are to be tapped, he said.

The CEA is mandated to publish national electricity plan for every five-year plan period through which it considers the power sector as a whole.

"This time, we are projecting energy demand with respect to distribution companies (discoms) as well as state-wise. Earlier, this exercise was carried out state-wise only. We are considering 78 discoms in the country," he said.

For the 12th plan period (2012-17), a capacity addition of about 76,000 megawatt (MW) was projected to meet the country's demand out of which 63,000 MW was projected to be from coal-fired plants. Inter-regional transmission capacity of 37,800 MW was projected during the period.

In the 12th plan period, 40 per cent of power projects were super critical, but from the 13th plan period and beyond, most of the thermal plants will be based on super critical technology as well as ultra critical technology, Dubey said.

Power plants with an aggregated capacity between 22,000 MW to 30,000 MW have either no fuel linkages or have fuel linkages but no power purchase agreements, he said.

"The central government is likely to formulate a policy to address this complexity," he said.

The CEA has also proposed to the government policy guidelines to provide flexibility in utilisation of domestic coal for reducing the cost of power generation, he said.

--IANS

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