The state-run Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MahaVitaran), struggling to narrow the widening demand-supply gap, has blamed the Maharashtra State Power Generation Company Limited (MahaGenco) for the shortfall in power availability, which forced MahaVitaran to purchase costly power from the spot market during October 1-11, 2011.
MahaGenco’s shortfall, in the range of 29-40 per cent, was huge compared with NTPC's 7-17 per cent and Ratnagiri Gas & Power Pvt Ltd's 0.9-15 per cent. MahaVitaran had to purchase 192.777 million units from the spot market in October 2011 at the average rate of Rs 5.58 per unit. Besides, it also had to resort to distress load shedding of up to 2004 MW due to the reduced availability of power. MahaGenco’s average tariff contracted to MahaVitaran was Rs 2.70 per unit (the tariff differs from station to station), against NTPC’s average tariff of Rs 2.90 and RGPPL’s Rs 4.10 per unit.
MahaGenco was expected to supply 5,000 Mw to MahaVitaran, but the actual supply was only 3,470.8 MW, creating a shortfall of 25.29 per cent during October 1-11, 2011. In the case of NTPC, the supply was 2,497 against 3,000 Mw minus 5.03 per cent, and it was 1,381 Mw against 1,600 Mw from RGPPL.
MahaVitaran's Managing Director Ajoy Mehta in his letter to MahaGenco's former managing director Subrat Ratho on March 14, 2012 had said that the wide variations in the day-wise availability could only add to its woes.
“The JSWREL (JSW’s plant located in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district) with whom MahaVitaran has a long-term contract, had maintained its availability at 88.54 per cent against 78.64 per cent during September 2011,” Mehta said in the letter. Incidentally, Mehta had sent his letter before Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission's (MERC) rejected Mahagenco's plea for directing the state load despatch centre to pay compensation for issuing backing down instructions.
Mehta had welcomed MahaGenco's suggestion to define the penalty for generating more than committed levels. “In fact, it is not only the deviations in generation with reference to the commitment that needs to be penalised, but the excess/under generation with reference to the declared capacity also needs to be penalised. While the intra-state availability based tariff (ABT) mechanism identifies the penal charges for the deviations of the instate generators with reference to the declared capacity, the ABT order released by Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (Merc) requires the contracting distribution companies to bear the same,” Mehta noted.
Mehta also mentioned that MahaVitaran had been pressing for such a penalty to address the situation where it fails to buy contracted power from MahaGenco or MahaGenco fails to supply contracted power according to the mutually-agreed schedule.
He suggested that MahaVitaran and MahaGenco may jointly take up this issue with Merc. Alternatively, both may add certain provisions in the power purchase agreement to take care of such situations, like backing down by MahaVitaran or lower generation by MahaGenco.
