Meeting total energy demand will remain a dream : CMD

Bangalore, Jan 16 (UNI) Meeting the full energy demand of the country will remain a distant dream if focussed actions were not initiated to address the issue, Power Grid Chairman and Managing Director R P Singh said today.

Delivering a public lecture on 'Growth of Power Sector in India: An overview', organised by National Institute of Advanced Sciences here, he said even after five years of bringing the Electricity Act, the power supply status remained where it was earlier. ''Situation has not changed,'' he added.

Strongly advocating a balanced development of generation, transmission and communication system, he said a single agency for different activities in the power sector should be brought about.

Dr Singh said consumer wanted supply of quality power with reliability at an affordable cost, which the power sector needed to address on urgent basis. Investment in the power sector was huge to be sustained and government plays a major role in tackling the situation and it has to remain as a dominant player, he added..

The CMD suggested setting up of separate lines and supply for rural and urban load. Installation of meters, billing and collection could be offered to local bodies, panchayats and franchise. ''BPL consumers could be clubbed into clusters with single meter feeding more families,'' he added.

The main mandate of Power Grid Corporation was to enable link from one region to the other but it was also ready to offer technical assistance and maintenance of distribution networks, if Escoms concerned desired, he said.

In Bihar, Goa and Puducherry, the Corporation improved the distribution network and efficiency. In Goa transmission, distribution losses was brought down to 16 per cent from 40 per cent.

Later speaking to newspersons on the sidelines, Dr Singh said there was no dearth of funds for Investment in the power sector, but there was a need for synergy between different players in the sector.

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