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

Maharashtra
The present level of transmission loss is rather high though it is seen to be reducing
from 8.02 per cent in 2002-03 to 6 per cent in 2004-2005. In the year 2005-06 it has
increased to 7.13 per cent worked out on the basis of data for the period March 2005
to January 2006. This is attributed to the outage of one pole of HVDC in August 2005
when unipolar operation was resorted to. HVDC bipole operation has now been
restored since March 2006 and the losses for the future period could be restricted to a
level of about 5 to 6 per cent.
The availability of the transmission system is seen to be continuously improving from
96.3 per cent in 2002-03 to 98.72 per cent in 2005-06. MSETCL contends that if there
was no breakdown of one pole of HVDC the availability would have crossed 99 per
cent. MSETCL has set a target of achieving more than 99 per cent availability of its
transmission system in a sustained manner from 2006-07 onwards.
Staff strength
The company has a staff of 13,223 on roll. On the basis of 70,734 MU of energy
proposed to be handled this year, energy handled per employee works out to 5.35 MU.
Financial Health
MSEB did not submit ARR and tariff petition to MERC for 2004-05 and 2005-06 till
February 2006 even though it has been restructured into MAHAGENCO, MSETCL
and MSEDCL in June 2005. As a result, tariff order dated 1 December 2003 issued by
MERC was still in force.
MERC have notified Tariff Regulations in August 2005. Recently MSETCL has
submitted its Aggregate Revenue Requirement (ARR) to MERC for 2005-06 and
2006-07. The ARR is based on following important assumptions:
i) Transmission losses have been considered as 6 per cent of energy handled;
ii) Five per cent increase is considered for most expenditure heads in line with
prevalent inflation index;
iii) All allocated loans considered for calculation of interest. Interest also includes
guarantee fees;
iv) Average depreciation rate adopted is 5.94 per cent; and
v) For 2005-2006, 4.5 per cent surplus is considered till 5 June 2005 and for the
balance period; return on equity of 14 per cent is adopted.
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