Naveen for reduction of commercial loss for viable power sector

Bhubaneswar, Sep 22 (UNI) Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today asked officials and power utilities to work together to bring down the technical and commercial losses to 15 per cent to make the power sector viable.

Mr Patnaik said only a drastic reduction of transmission and Distribution and Aggregate Technical and Commercial losses could turn around the power sector.

Inaugurating the state level work-shop on consumer satisfaction organised by the Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) here, Mr Patnaik said the T&D loss in Orissa stood at 38.6 per cent against the national average of 31 per cent in 2006-07.

It was higher than the target fixed by OERC at 32.8 per cent.

Similarly, while the Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses on the average in the country was 34.54 per cent in Orissa it stood at 42.7 per cent, much higher than the target fixed by OERC at 37.9 per cent.

Mr Patnaik said generation, transmission, distribution and the end user sectors should be integrated with support from advanced technology to ensure overall growth of the power sector.

He said the OERC should strike a balance between consumer interest and commercial viability to provide quality power at reasonable rate to the consumers.

The Chief Minister also emphasised on the need to curb power theft with determination as theft make further investment in generation and distribution unviable and unattractive.

Mr Patnaik said the central government should allow levy of duty on power generation by the state and allocate 12 per cent of generated power free to the host state as variable cost and suitable contribution by IPPS for ecological generation in the vicinity of power plants to compensate the state with high coal or hydro resources.

Finance Minister P C Ghadei said the power sector reform was a part of the process to achieve sustainable fiscal stability and the government was committed to it.

Energy Minister S N Patro said the major objective of the power reform was to safeguard the consumer interest while developing the electricity industries in a holistic fashion.

He said various regulations were in place to empower the consumer, he said the new mantra of the distribution utility should be customer relationship management and improvement of delivery mechanism.

OERC Chairman B K Das called for a complete re-engineering of all consumers interface process to make the power reform a success and provide quality power to the consumers.

UNI