Report of Indian Institute of Public Administration ... - Ministry of Power

Gujarat
It has opened up a number of new opportunities for the utilities. Firstly, it will lead to
a better effort in conducting energy audit. Energy supplied from the new JGY rural
feeders could be tallied with the sum total of energy consumptions in all connected
villages till meters are provided to each distribution transformer and transformer-wise
audit is conducted. Increasing consumption in rural areas will now bring additional
revenue to the Utility, as this energy will all be metered. Energy consumption for
agricultural pumping loads can be assessed more correctly from the energy meters
provided in the sub-station on the now dedicated agricultural feeders.
The tariff for agricultural pumpsets is based on horsepower (HP) of the connected
motor and not on consumption of energy as no meters are provided to individual
installations. Where groundwater level is high, this leads to pumpsets remaining in
operation for the entire period when supply is on and no efforts are undertaken to
conserve the available water and/or reduce energy consumption. Where groundwater
level has gone down, low capacity motors get replaced with higher capacity motors
and this does not get recorded in the Utility’s database, resulting in loss of revenue to
the Utility. With separate feeders for agricultural pumps now available, energy
consumed per HP of connected load can be worked out for each such feeder. It should
now be possible to devise a new graded tariff structure, though still based on HP of
the connected motor, in such a way that tariff is lowest for a slab where energy
consumed per HP of connected load is lowest and increases according to increasing
per HP consumption. With careful design of tariff structure, it should be possible to
induce the consumer to report increased HP of the installation on his own or agree to
fix an energy meter. Both these options would benefit the Utility as well as
agricultural consumers.
With active participation of consumers connected to agricultural feeders, as has been
successfully demonstrated by villagers in ‘Akshay Prakash Yojna’ in Maharashtra, it
should be possible to reduce energy consumption and losses on these feeders by selfregulation
of use of pumpsets in two or three groups, each group using energy at any
given time for an agreed and defined duration. This will also reduce consumption of
energy per connected HP and result in reduced tariff for agricultural consumers.
It can be seen that JGY has been cost effective; it would improve standard of living in
villages on account of availability of 24 hours of three-phase power supply and has
opened new opportunities for the DISCOMs. Incidentally this initiative has come, not
from the administrative/technical wing of Government of Gujarat/GEB, but from the
political wing in Gujarat.
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