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Technical issues in North-South grid connectivity have led to a spiral in spot electricity tariffs in South India over the last three days.
While the exact nature of the problem is not known, sources associated with electricity trade told BusinessLine that ‘route congestion due to technical issues’ is restricting availability of power in South India, leading to a sharp rise in round-the-clock (RTC) average tariffs in the spot market.
As on October 17, the RTC tariff in three southern regions was ₹11.86 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) on the Indian Energy Exchange. This was nearly three times higher than the average of ₹4.26 per kWh in the rest of the country.
Southern regions were cut off from the National grid (then restricted to the North) and had limited transmission facility within States till the Power Grid Corporation completed interregional connectivity projects a few years ago.
The PGCIL website claims that the “One-Nation, One Grid” plan was implemented in December 2013 with the completion of the 765kV Raichur-Solapur project. However, in reality the project was not stabilised until August 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated it to the nation.
By end-2015, when PGCIL completed many allied projects — including the Khammam-Nagarjuna Sagar transmission line for Telengana and Andhra Pradesh — spot tariffs in the South became at par with the rest of the country.
The trend was broken on October 16, when the RTC in the South was ₹10.73/kWh on the IEX, against a national average of ₹4.72/kWh.
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