Comments
In an effort to further ease procurement of renewable energy (RE), the government has mandated creation of a central pool of RE sources from which an intermediary company will procure electricity and supply to an entity involved in distribution and retail supply of power to states at uniform tariff.
This is part of the Electricity (Amendment) Rules, 2022, which were notified last week by the Power Ministry. Under the norms, the central pool will be a repository of power from Inter State Transmission System (ISTS) connected RE sources such as solar, wind, hydro, biomass, biofuel and biogas.
An intermediary procurer, which is an entity between the end procurer with the renewable energy company, will purchase electricity from generating companies and resell it to the end procurer, which is a company with a license to undertake distribution and retail supply of power.
The intermediary procurer will supply power to the end procurer at a uniform RE tariff that will be calculated by an implementing agency separately on a monthly basis for each category in the central pool. For instance, there will be separate pools for RE sources such as solar power central pool and wind power central pool.
Cost recovery & disputes
Another important norm is regarding timely recovery of power purchase costs. The rules specify that appropriate state commissions will have to, within 90 days of publication of the rules, specify a price adjustment formula for recovering costs on account of variation in the price of fuel, or power purchase costs and impact in the cost due to such variation.
These costs will be automatically passed through in consumer tariffs, on a monthly basis, and such monthly automatic adjustments shall be trued up on an annual basis by the appropriate state commissions.
Timely resolution of disputes has also been taken up. Under the said rules, state commissions will have to pass the final order, within 120 days from the date of receipt of the petition, which can be extended by 30 days for reasons to be recorded in writing.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.