The covid-19 pandemic has not only affected the lives and livelihood of people, but also is affecting the power sector in Odisha. Due to the lockdown, the power demand declined 14% during the months of March-June, compared with the previous year’s period, an official said on Tuesday.
The consumption and captive generation also came down by 25% in April, 12% in May and 2% in June. Because of the low demand, the revenue gap of Grid Corporation of Odisha (Gridco) has widened as it has to pay the charges which are fixed to power generating plants as per the power purchase agreement.
In a meeting, chaired by Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy, decided to extend the basic and necessary financial guarantee support to Gridco, which conducts transmission and bulk supply of electricity.He also asked the OPTCL, Gridco and distribution companies to make the power sector self-sustaining through aggressive system reform and reduction in aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses.
Further he said them to focus on cutting AT&C losses as 1 per cent reduction led to around Rs 130 crore revenue gain. Development Commissioner Suresh Chandra Mohapatra instructed the Energy Department to redesign its investment in renewable power sector, keeping in view the cheap availability of renewable energy from the inter-state market.
Tripathy called for optimising the existing network, increase metering, billing and collection efficiency. This year, Discoms were asked to get at least 98 per cent billing and collection capacity. Gridco and OPTCL were asked to lessen the operational cost through adoption of innovative tech-based approaches.
