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

Rajasthan
Open Access consumers, the DISCOMs would not lose and they would be able to sell
the available power to other industries. Many other cases have also come to notice in
Rajasthan where the captive plants have to either shut down or reduce their generation
to satisfy the conditions put forth by the DISCOMs.
It is strange that, on the one hand, the Ministry of Power, Government of India is
trying to encourage the captive plants to run round the clock so that if necessary they
can inject the surplus power in the grid and, on the other, the outdated provisions
regarding the minimum charges compel the captive plant owners to shut down
their plants or to substantially reduce their generation in order to utilise the
power equivalent to the minimum charges to be paid by them to the concerned
DISCOM.
In order to encourage the captive plants, it could be laid down that only energy
charges would be levied from them as and when they use power – may be the
energy charges could be 10 per cent higher than the normal energy charges. If
such a provision is introduced, it will encourage the captive power plants in a big way
and the DISCOMs will have the benefit of additional generation available through
CPPs without extra investment made to enhance the generating capacity. Such a
concession will not have any adverse financial impact on the DISCOMs – rather their
availability of power will improve. Way back in 1995, RSEB took such a forward
looking view and exempted such CPPs from minimum charges. In emergency,
whenever they used RSEB power, they were charged on temporary power tariff basis.
IMPLEMENTATION OF PROVISIONS OF THE THE ELECTRICITY ACT,
2003
The status of implementation of certain provisions of the EA, 2003 is as under:
Section (172): Separation of Transmission Utility
With the notification of the ‘Rajasthan Power Sector Reforms Transfer Scheme’ 2000,
on 19 July 2000, the assets, liabilities and personnel of the erstwhile RSEB have been
transferred to the newly incorporated five companies namely a GENCO (RRVUNL), a
TRANSCO (RRVPNL) and three DISCOMs, viz., Jaipur VVNL, Ajmer VVNL and
Jodhpur VVNL. Separation of functions of trading from TRANSCO (RVPNL) was
effected with effect from 1 April 2004 vide Notification dated 28 February 2004.
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