The Hindu Business Line : Pune may get respite from load shedding

Trial run
Representatives of the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd have decided that the trial run will go on for three days from Friday and the final decision on the implementation would be taken up next week.

Pune , May 24

With the Meteorological Department giving indications that Pune will be receiving monsoons, the Maharashtra State Electricity Board is also giving in the good news that load shedding in Pune is likely to be off from May 31.

Pune is also the first city in the country to go in for the pilot experiment involving public-private partnership to lighten the load shedding by using the captive power plants.

The trial run is expected to go on stream this Friday. To put this in action, the representatives of the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL) have decided that the trial run will go on for three days from Friday and the final decision on the implementation would be taken up next week.

According to the Web site of MSEDCL, it had filed its proposal for the approval of recovery of additional coast as a reliability charge for mitigating load shedding in the Pune circle. It noted that considering the shortage of 100 MW per hour and running of the captive power plants for 10 hours in a day and considering 20 per cent transmission and distribution losses and variable cost at peak hours at Rs 3.65 per unit, MSEDCL has estimated the additional cost burden on Pune circle consumers at Rs 266 crore translating to Rs 0.84 paise per unit on the total billed in the city.

MSEDCL has also approved reliability charge of 0.42 paise per kWh to be levied on the consumers of the Pune urban circles excluding domestic consumers consuming up to 300 units per month for implementing the CII proposal to eliminate the load shedding in the Pune urban circle.

The Maharashtra Regulatory Commission (MERC) on May 16 had given the final approval for the CII initiative to utilise power produced from the captive power plants of 33 industrial units to lighten the load shedding in Pune and had directed MSEDCL to provide uninterrupted power.