Power crisis may plague Mumbai as well: MERC

Mumbai can not remain insulated for long from power crisis in Maharashtra which is going from bad to worse, warned Pramod Deo, chairman of the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC).

He was addressing a session on 'Emerging Power Scenario in a Maharashtra', in a seminar organised by Indian Merchant Chamber (IMC) on Power.

"At the end of January when I was preparing a presentation for this seminar power shortage was 5,500 Mw and now it has already reached to 5,700 Mw," he added.

The peak time shortage of power is around 40 per cent and rest of the time it is around 30 per cent so difference between peak time and normal time hardly exists in the state, Deo pointed out.

And to complicate situation, state is on MoU signing spree with various industries, I wonder from where it is going to supply power to all these industries which are coming to state, Deo said.

Maharashtra government should go for Pune model of distributed power generation and franchise approach towards distribution as a medium term measure to overcome power shortage in the state, he suggested.

We are going to write to the state government on this issue and give our suggestion in our capacity as an advisor, he said.

Elaborating on plan Deo said, in Pune local industry had captive capacity of nearly 90 MW, after working out a model which will allow industry to recover the cost to generate power from captive capacity, power is supplied in Pune through these captive power plants, which is taking off the load on main grid.

Similar system can be put in place in cities like Thane, Navi Mumbai, Nashik, and Aurangabad, Nagpur. etc. where there is high percentage of recoveries and low percentages of transmission & distribution losses (T&D), Deo claimed.

Where there is captive capacity is not available in adequate numbers, we can go for generation through DG1 sets and second hand DG sets are available in large number in China.

And those can be imported and commissioned in 10 to 12 months. And as they are secondhand sets and could be run on furnace oil, they will bring down cost of generation of power further, he opined.

The state also should go for franchise model of distribution in these cities as it will ensure smoother distribution mechanism and will ensure these cities get adequate power, Deo said.