Ril Gets Nod For Supplying Power To Nocil Plant

The Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) has permitted Reliance Industries to supply electricity from its captive power plant in Patalganga, on the north-eastern outskirts of the Mumbai metropolitan region, to Nocil plant on Thane-Belapur road.

Reliance made the request on March 9, 1998, for supplying power from its captive plant to Nocil, to which the MSEB gave its no-objection recently and agreed to wheel the power, sources in the board said.

Nocil will be the second plant in the region to receive direct power supply from Reliance's 92.34 mw captive plant, the other being Terene Fibres which has been receiving 53 lakh units per day for a few months now. Nocil's requirement would be up to 95 lakh units per day. The day will be considered in two phases -- daytime 6 to 12 and night 11 to 6. MSEB will charge 2 per cent of the units wheeled as wheeling charges and 9 per cent as transmission charges. MSEB has told Reliance that any excess energy supplied to Nocil will be considered "lapsed" and there will be no liability on the board. According to sources, MSEB's captive power policy allows for a unit to supply 25 per cent of the energy capacity to two neighbouring plants, after mutual negotiations. With its supply of 148 lakh units per day to Nocil and Terene Fibres, Reliance has apparently exhausted its entire limit of 25 per cent of the capacity. Meanwhile, union sources allege that MSEB's captive power policy comfortably allows private companies to

 

circumvent the rigmarole of setting up IPPs and sign up deals for power supply directly to industries. The union is all the more perturbed as the incentive provided by the policy allowing partial supply from a captive unit to two neighbouring units would only lead to further deterioration of the financials of the board, with such loss of the subsidising sector. Currently, according to unofficial figures, the ratio between industrial/commercial (the subsidising sectors) and domestic/agricultural users (the subsidised sector) is equal.

Meanwhile, the union has threatened a three-day strike from August 10 against the board's plan to set up a private joint venture company to supply power to New Bombay region.