Team News Riveting
New Delhi, August 26
Ministry of Power has set up a regulatory compliance division to monitor the various regulatory parameters and their compliances by the DISCOMS as well as state Commissions.
This was informed at an interaction of Union Minister of Power and New and Renewable Energy R K Singh with the Electricity Regulators here today. The forum of regulators resolved to prepare norms on various regulatory parameters and issues. These norms would be adopted by the State Commissions. This would help the State commissions in adopting best practices and also for faster implementation of reform and regulatory policies.
In the course of the meeting, it was informed that Ministry of power is working on Resource adequacy guidelines and Guidelines for procurement of power in line with load fluctuation requirement, contract term, energy mix, and Renewable obligations etc. Both are expected in next two to three months.
Issues related to Electric Vehicles were also discussed. Technical as well as the commercial issues would be resolved by the State Commissions so that EVs can be promoted.
The emphasis was made on determination of cost reflective tariff, setting up of the adequate number of the Consumer Grievance Redressal Forums with consumer representatives.
The regulatory issues like financial viability of the Distribution companies, payment of dues, reduction in AT&C losses, roll out of Smart metering in prepayment mode, timely issuance of tariff orders, timely disposal of the petitions, promotional tariff for the EV charging stations etc were discussed.The forum of Regulators had recently undertaken a study to analyze the impact of various factors on the retail tariff of electricity and to develop measures to address them. Ministry of power has already acted on most of the recommendations pertaining to the central government and have requested that the State Commission should quickly act upon the recommendation so that the retail tariff for the consumers can be reduced.
