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Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), has in its latest report has proposed recommendations to reduce financial and operational inefficiencies across India’s power distribution sector, which as of May 2020 had accumulated massive overdue payment liabilities of Rs116,340 crore (US$16bn) to generation companies while already carrying a total outstanding debt of Rs478,000 crore (US$66bn) in financial year 2018-19.
The report made by Vibhuti Garg and Kashish Shah from the IEEFA, recommends, among other strategies, that discoms work with state governments to retire their old inefficient and expensive thermal power plants as a key pathway to reducing their average cost of power procurement.
“We suggest state-based discoms sit down with state generation utilities and review what old thermal power plants they can retire, given the state of surplus capacity,” said Garg.
“Many thermal power stations are old and operating at well under half their capacity, yet the states are bound by contracts to continue to pay hefty capacity charges. We understand that retiring power plants won’t be easy as the proponents will want to make money for the life of the contract period. But in order to move forward the states will have to jump this hurdle,” says the report.
By taking steps to retire end-of-life, expensive legacy thermal power contracts, states will reduce their loses and be in more of a position to contract cleaner cheaper renewable power and invest in new technologies to further reduce losses.
Discoms have been unable to improve their operational performance even after receiving multiple bailout packages from the government in the last decade.
While there is no silver bullet to improve discoms’ financial sustainability and viability, the report analyses three state-based case studies with respective recommendations on Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, while also focusing on actions the Government of India can make now to reduce the discom’s financial burden.
This includes resolving legacy contracts issues and closing inefficient plants as it will result in significant savings from fixed charge payments while reducing pollution and carbon footprints.
Reducing cross-subsidies to decrease the burden on C&I customers and increase healthy competition while allowing for the implementation of Direct Benefit Transfers (DBTs), solar irrigation pumps, and the adoption of policies favouring the uptake of solar rooftop systems.
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Reducing unsustainably high AT&C losses through digitalisation including progressively installing smart and prepaid meters will help discoms manage their load better while reducing metering and billing losses and theft. Revising tariffs annually will allow discoms to keep up with inflation.
Increasing private competition will encourage generators, distributors, and electricity supply companies to develop technologies to increase efficiency, lower costs, and make supply more reliable. Privatisation of some profitable regional franchises could provide a capital infusion to reduce the state discom footprint and debt levels, while putting more focus on resolving the long tail of the most heavily lossmaking regions, said the report.
Moving to a National Pool Market will optimise generation nationally as the best return from the huge investment in the national generation fleet, while progressively squeezing out the highest cost suppliers and incentivising the entry of new low cost generation (at tariffs less than half of some of the legal thermal generators).
Implementing a new tariff structure, with indexation for renewable energy tariffs with developers bidding for levelized tariffs, will allow inflation indexation over the length of the contract, lowering solar and wind tariffs in the first 5 years of operation by 10-20%, and accelerating uptake and thereby displacing expensive and obsolete thermal capacity.
“There is no point in bailing out state discoms again and again without a locking in a systemic improvement,” says Shah. Absent a sustained resolution of the discom sector losses, India’s overall power sector reform will be stilted and ineffective.
“The government of India should consider implementing these recommendations and if state government lending and guarantees and discom subsidies are still required, they should be tied to the performance of the states in implementing reform in their distribution sectors,” he said.
Garg says the extreme financial mess in the distribution sector is unsustainable and requires bold policy choices and government expenditure to create an economically sustainable national electricity system. “New private competition can bring new capital and more innovation,” says Garg.
“The central government should also prioritise a green stimulus to recover the economic growth smothered by COVID-19. Such growth coupled with the reform measures proposed could help to extract the distribution companies from their current predicament,” said the report.
