Ensure adequate supply, plan for future: Govt guideline for power discoms

Consulting with the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the government has issued guidelines that introduce statutory obligations for power distribution companies by making them responsible to ensure sufficient electricity supply to meet demand in their area, Financial Express (FE) has reported.

Power minister RK Singh was quoted in the report as saying, “The guidelines will ensure that the practice of load shedding by discoms and occurrence of electricity supply crunch is avoided in future.” the minister added that these guidelines will act as a major reform and will ensure hassle-free, reliable power supply to citizens.

Resource Adequacy Planning Framework for Power Sector guidelines give out a time-bound and scientific approach to assess the future electricity demand and to act in advance to meet such rise in power demand, the power ministry said in a statement.

The guidelines provide an organisational framework to ensure that there is no dearth of resources to fulfil the future power demand. This mechanism takes care of resources from the national level to discom level in a way that ensures the availability of resources at each stage, the FE report said.

The minister was quoted in the report as saying, “The time-bound and scientific approach to assess the electricity demand for the future and taking necessary actions to procure resources in advance to meet this demand will ensure that the practice of load shedding by discoms and occurrence of electricity supply crunch periods is avoided in future.”

Power minister RK Singh said that the robust resource adequacy framework will help achieve two objectives; ensuring energy security at optimised cost along with a smooth shift towards a clean and sustainable future.