Skip to main content

Power distribution losses rise amidst massive investment in conventional technology

By Shankar Sharma* 
It should be a matter of great concern to the people of the country that the AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial) losses of Discoms has deteriorated from 20.73 per cent in 2019-20 to 22.32 per cent in 2020-21. AT&C can be viewed as a measure of the overall efficiency of technical and commercial operation of the industry.
'The Report on Performance of Power Utilities in 2020-21' unveiled at state power ministers' conference in Udaipur also stated that overall AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial) losses of discoms deteriorated from 20.73 per cent in 2019-20 to 22.32 per cent in 2020-21.
Whereas the overall efficiency of the power sector in the country is struggling to go below 20%, as against the global best practice of only about 5%, it must be seen as a monumental waste of our resources (both the financial as well as other kinds of resources) that our authorities are investing massively in conventional technology electricity generation sources such as coal, gas, dam based hydro and nuclear power plants along with all the associated infrastructure.
Even if only 50% of such massive investments is diverted to renewable energy (RE) based energy infrastructure, such Discoms' aggregate losses can come down drastically, while also helping massively with greener economy.
Another report on fossil fuels profits and subsidies can say a lot more about the totally irrational policies being pursued by our authorities. Many such issues of critical importance should be diligently viewed in the context that the National Electricity Plan (for the years 2022- 2027/32) has projected massive increase not only in coal power capacity, but also in other conventional power generation technologies such as gas power, hydro power and nuclear power.
A good number of feedback in this regard by civil society to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA)/ the Ministry of Power can help to minimise the associated impacts on our communities, especially in the true context of Climate Change.
---
*Power and climate policy analyst

Comments

Post a Comment

TRENDING

When nostalgia becomes a memory we never lived: The 80s AI trend

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan  The retro hair, vintage clothes and analogue grain are not the real attraction. The real fascination is that AI can now manufacture something technology has always struggled to reproduce: the tactile, imperfect feeling of memory.
Post a Comment
»

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.
66 comments
»

Dolly Parton: From a mountain cabin to a library for the world

By Suresh Deman  Born in a one-room cabin in the Tennessee mountains, Dolly Parton turned poverty into poetry, heartbreak into song, and her father's inability to read into a programme that has given more than 300 million books to children. Her remarkable journey suggests that a life is measured not only by how far one travels, but by what one sends back *** Dolly Parton was born into poverty, but never into a poverty of imagination. She entered the world on 19 January 1946 in the mountains of East Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children. The Parton family had little money and few of the comforts that much of America would eventually take for granted. Her father, Robert Lee Parton, farmed, built and laboured wherever work could be found. Her mother, Avie Lee, possessed a different kind of wealth. She filled the crowded home with Appalachian songs, stories, faith and the conviction that hardship need not extinguish beauty. Dolly's childhood poverty was not something later inven...
1 comment
»