Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) has observed that the state government could bring down power tariffs and save more than Rs 300 crore by reducing its dependency on private power plants.
Hearing Grid Corporation of Odisha Limited’s (GRIDCO’s) petition against the Vedanta’s refusal of supplying power, the OERC observed that Odisha has become a power surplus state and is now exporting around 1000-1500 Mega Watt (MW) power.
The OERC stated that the GRIDCO has surplus power and it is purchasing more power than the actual demand.
The OERC made this observation after GRIDCO appealed to the regulatory body against Vedanta’s denial to draw power of about 600 Mega Units (MU) from its Unit-II plant as per an earlier order under a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).
However, the OERC compelled GRIDCO to find alternative and cheaper sources of power generation owing to delay in execution of the order.
“GRIDCO is paying fixed charges to plants like Farakka (West Bengal), Kahalgaon (Bihar) and Barh (Bihar) without offtaking power from these plants. Even though GRIDCO does not draw power from these stations, it has to pay the fixed cost to NTPC stations as per existing PPAs. However, if GRIDCO surrenders M/s Vedanta power, they won’t have to pay the fixed cost of Rs 399.42 crore at 85 per cent of availability,” the OERC said.
According to sources, Vedanta’s actual tariff is Rs 2.80 Kilo Watt Hour (kwh) as per the rates determined for 2021-22 financial year.
However, GRIDCO has been paying only at Rs 2.5/kwh on an ad-hoc basis. Moreover, sourcing of power from alternate sources is expected to cost only Rs2.5/kwh or less.
Moreover, experts suggest GRIDCO can further unburden the consumers and reduce power tariffs by surrendering and non-requisitioning of power from surplus PPAs.
The loss on fixed charges could be checked by surrendering surplus PPAs from private operators like Vedanta’s Unit II, which would save around Rs 277 crore annually to the public exchequer.
PNN