Restricting and limiting low supply transmission, to curb losses

Letter of Credit’, applying only to GENCOs is a partial solution to reduce the outstanding dues.

Chetan Phakatkar, International Business, Director – Indian Operations, Luxra International AG discusses how important it is to balance generation and supply of power, further suggests ways to fill the debt gap between DISCOMs and GENCOs.

Moving away from generation and focusing on supply. Your take?
For our country, both generation and supply are equally important, though we need more solar generation; that is without question. To focus on supply, I would give utmost priority to underserved/uncovered sections of society. Here, the potential of solar for distributed generation and supply, where there is no supply at all, is immense. No other system of generation has the same promise of reaching the most remote human settlements. It can be cost effective too. It eliminates the need for costly transmission lines and transmission losses. This year we hope to build alliances to provide this as a service.

According to PRAAPTI portal, there has been a rise in the outstanding dues to GENCOs by the DISCOMs. Would this move to focus on supply, will bring any relief to the debts?
Outstanding dues or overdue payments to GENCOs by the DISCOMs are a legacy problem. Though this has been tackled to some extent, the problem persists because DISCOMs have to invest in new assets/upgradation but its source of finance is only from consumers, there is no separate program of fund raising for capital (equity). In the absence of any public issue of shares, the State Government should itself contribute adequate capital funds by increasing its ownership equity. This will solve the problem effectively.

What policy or tariff changes are you expecting to come under the UDAY 2.0 as it is supposedly aimed at improving operations?

Despite no publicly declared major incidents of cyberattack in the renewable energy sector to date, successful attacks on the wider energy industry are expected. What are your thoughts on how to curb off such attacks?
In India, most “command & control” systems are not on public networks, that is where the potential of cyber attacks is very high. Some very smart people in the government have seem to have realised this and they should continue the policy adapted so far.

Land acquisition delays have been majorly hindering EPC processes. Can you give us a better picture of what is going wrong in this and what is the way forward?
Of the three issues mentioned by you, land acquisition is the main hindrance, mainly due to multiple approval and authorisations required. Converge the approval and authorisation process of the government into a single agency would be the ideal solution.

What kind of infrastructure should be in place for an efficient supply?
Restricting and limiting low supply transmission would be required for efficient supply and curb transmission losses. This is where the main inefficiency factor is very high. So, infrastructure upgradation should be the priority.

Chetan Phakatkar, International Business, Director – Indian Operations, Luxra International