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

Maharashtra
Though this situation changed completely after Regulatory Commissions were set up
and they started rationalising tariffs, the Utilities continued to experience deep
financial difficulties and could not cope up with the growing demands of the sector.
MSEB was affected a in similar way, though probably less on account of Government
and more due to its inability to take timely actions for improving its performance. As a
result, MSEB’s consumers have to face long hours of load shedding year after year.
The foremost lesson learnt is that Utilities have to forecast load growth and
requirement of energy over a longer period. They should proactively take timely
necessary actions to organise setting up of the required generating as well as T&D
capacity in advance of the time it is required, so as to take care of unexpected
slippages in construction programmes. The argument that investments in capacity
additions ahead of time of their actual requirement is not a financially sound proposal,
pales when economic loss on account of load shedding for not having the required
capacity is taken into consideration. Ours is an energy-starved country and to come to
a stage, when investments for and requirements of, capacity additions synchronise in
time, is a long journey. For economic growth and creation of jobs, rapid
industrialisation is necessary. Before industries are established, infrastructure of
generation and distribution of electricity is required to be in place and not the other
way round.
IMPROVEMENTS IN THE DISTRIBUTION SECTOR
It is well acknowledged that for achieving overall improvement in electricity sector,
improvement of distribution sector is of prime importance. If not handled properly and
urgently, it would not only result in continued financial losses in the distribution
sector, but would also resulting delayed payments for generation and transmission and
will bring down the financial health of these sectors as well.
As a result of inadequate investments in the distribution sector for long periods, the
network has remained substantially weak, resulting in high distribution losses. It is
incapable of serving the increased demand. Consumers face very low voltages and
frequent interruptions of power supply. This definitely calls for increased investments
in capacity additions by adding number of high voltage lines and sub-stations,
increasing the number of high voltage transformers and feeders, more distribution
transformers, reactive support in the network, etc. This will result in reducing
technical losses in the distribution system.
10.3