The two-day 21st Technical Coordination Committee (TCC) and North Eastern Regional Power Committee (NERPC) meeting hosted by State power department got underway at Hotel Vivor here on Wednesday.
Delivering the keynote address on the occasion, TCC chairman and power engineer-in-chief Shikato Sema expressed concern on the alarming figures of outstanding dues to NEEPCO, OTPC and NTPC and urged the constituent members to take extraordinary measures to clear the dues as financial health of those generating companies was crucial to sustainability of the region as a whole.
He also stressed taking up with Government of India (GoI) the issue of Power System Development Fund (PSDF) funding pattern regarding “reliable communication” project for 100% funding as a special case for the North-eastern States.
Shikato said the power demand met from the North-eastern (NER) Grid had increased from around 1.5 GW in 2009-10 to approximately 3 GW in 2019-20, and from 690 MU per month in 2009-10 to 1,360 MU per month in 2019-20, which is about 100% growth in the last 10 years.
He remarked that the power sector in India had undergone significant progress since Independence and now has an installed capacity of 374 GW approximately as in December 2020. He said India has the world’s largest synchronised national grid with 4,33,510 circuit KM of transmission lines at various voltage levels like 765kV, 400kV, 220k ,+/- 500kV and +/-800 kV at present.
The TCC chairman said the installed renewable generation capacity also increased at a fast pace over the past few years, posting a CAGR of 17.33% between financial year 20I4 and 2020, even as GoI has also set an ambitious target of installing 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022, which includes 100 GW from solar, 60 GW from wind, 10 GW from bio-power and 5 GW from small hydro-power.
Stressing following up on the minutes of 20th TCC meeting held on September 12, 2019 at Guwahati, Shikato observed that there was a time when Kopili hydro-electric project (HEP), Khangdong HEP and Loktak HEP were the only Central sector generators in the Northeast and NER Grid was dependent on power import from the eastern region. Presently, he said the installed capacity of NER Grid was approximately 4.5 GW, which was around 150% of maximum demand of the region, even as transmission sector also witnessed rapid growth post Independence.
He said a slew of regulatory and policy reforms have been initiated in the country’s power sector in the last two decades, which include, among others, implementation of ABT mechanism, open access in transmission system, introduction of power exchanges, DSM regulations, introduction of Renewable Energy Certificate mechanism, etc.
Mentioning that one of the recent remarkable initiatives in Indian power sector was the launch of real time market (RTM) with effect from June 1, 2020, Shikato said prior to this market option available for power procurement/sale was day-ahead market.
However, with the launch of RTM, constituents across the country were getting an option to meet their energy requirements closer to real-time operation, he said, adding that the entire North-eastern States, including Nagaland, were actively participating in RTM to optimise their portfolio and meet their requirement.
He emphasised that since almost all States had completed implementation of Advanced Distribution Management Solutions (ADMS) pilot project, there was a need to take up ADMS project implementation for the entire State as early as possible from PSDF funding.
Referring to Scheduling, Accounting, Metering and Settlement of Transactions (SAMAST) project taken up as common for all the North-eastern States, Shikato said as it was already under implementation in some States, the rest left out need to be pushed for early implementation.
To optimise the benefit, he said downstream connectivity considerations should also be planned and considered accordingly during conceptualisation itself by all concerned, especially during project appraisals.
He said the downstream connectivity issue of 400/220 KV sub-station at Zhadima in Nagaland and 11 KV downstream connectivity for North Eastern Region Power System Improvement Project (NERPSIP) in Nagaland were classic examples where the beneficiary States were not properly apprised of its responsibilities.
Members from Central undertakings and dignitaries from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram are taking part in the two-day meet.
Earlier, chief engineer (D&R) Moa Aier gave the welcome address.