Discoms from Gujarat, Maharashtra shine in Power Ministry’s FY23 integrated performance rating

The Power Ministry’s 12th edition of the Integrated Rating of Discoms, which was released on Monday, has judged distribution companies from Mumbai, Surat and Ahmedabad as the top performers with A+ ratings during FY23.

The latest edition, which rates performance of 55 Discoms for FY23, adjudged 12 utilities with the highest ranking of A+.

Overall, out of the 55 utilities, 14 received a performance rating of A+, 4 received A, 7 received B, 13 received B-, 11 have received C and 6 Discoms have received the rating of C-. No utility has received the lowest rating of D.

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RK Singh, Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy, releasing the 12th Edition of Integrated Rating of Discoms

“The public need to know how the discoms are performing and what their efficiencies are. The ratings exercise is an important step towards transparency in governance. Besides this, the ratings also aim at encouraging discoms and energy departments which have low efficiencies to improve, as has happened in the past. The ratings are a mirror to the system,” Power Minister R K Singh said while releasing the latest rankings.

While the number of Discoms in the A+ category have gone up from 12 in the 10th edition to 14 in the 12th edition, the number of Dsicoms in the C category have come down from 32 in the 10th edition to 17 in the 12th edition of Integrated Ratings.

Maharashtra & Gujarat shine

Adani Electricity Mumbai (Maharashtra) took the first position, followed by Torrent Power Surat (Gujarat), Torrent Power Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Gujarat’s state power utilities Dakshin Gujarat Vij Company (DGVCL) and Uttar Gujarat Vijli Company (UGVCL) were at the fourth and fifth positions, respectively.

Among the 42 State government power utilities, which have been rated, nine utilities belonging to Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh have earned a rating of either A+ or A. All 11 private discoms have received a performance rating of either A+, A, B or B-.

The 12th edition has also given integrated performance ratings to the power departments of 11 States and Union Territories.

Among these, Thrissur Corporation Electricity Department (TCED) of Kerala emerged on top, with a rating of A, followed by power departments of New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) at the second spot followed by Puducherry, Goa and Nagaland. All achieved a rating of B.

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Overall, among the 11 power departments which figure in the performance ratings, no department received either the highest rating of A+ or the lowest rating of D.

Key findings

The 12^th edition pointed out that AT&C losses improved to 15.4 per cent in FY23, while billing efficiency improved to 87 per cent and collection efficiency remained high at 97.3 per cent.

Late Payment Surcharge (LPS) Rules drove reduction in payables to generation and transmission companies. Days Payable reduced to 126 days and Days Receivable also reduced to 119 days.

State governments disbursed 108 per cent of amounts booked for tariff subsidy during FY23. Further, a few States supported financial losses of Discoms through subsidy grants, totaling to ₹44,000 crore during the year.

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Average power purchase cost increased by 71 paise per kilowatt hour (kWh) during FY23, driven by 8 per cent growth in power demand, more expensive coal imports and higher exchange prices especially during summers.

The ACS-ARR gap, the cash-adjusted gap per unit energy, increased to 55 paise per kWh in FY23 due to purchase cost not being passed on fully to consumers.

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