Energetica India Magazine - September 2022

POWER SECTOR In India, the power cycle is run because of four major pillars: - The first three pillars of the Energy cycle have a robust financial condition, the fourthone i.e.,Discomis the key reason for the power crisis in India. The first thing we need to understand is the power value chain in India and how energy comes from the coal mines to your laptop this value chain includes four major steps power generation elec- tricity transmission electricity distribution and finally trading the value chain starts with the energy producers who mine and refine fuels that are used in electricity production this includes all types of energy sources like coal gas oil or even nuclear-based fuels the fuels are then delivered to the generation facilities where the electricity generator uses the fuel to drive a generator to produce electricity and then to dispatch it to a transmission and distribu- tion system or T&D system this system distributes the electricity to consumer locations through a transmission and distribution grid and from here onwards it is transported by energy exchanges or other electronic trading platforms over an extensive network to regional suppliers and from there to private public and industrial consumers now in case of Coal India is almost amonopoly company that is owned by the government of India and this company ex- tracts coal and supplies it to power generation companies in this case these companies are thermal power plant companies like tata power and Adani power then we have electricity transmission companies wherein we have both government and private players like power gridcorporationof Indiawhich is responsible for interstate transmis- sion of electricity and Adani transmission which is a private player then we have distribution companies which is the highlight of our discussion today so pay very close attention to this these companies are called discounts which is short form for distribution companies these are usually government owned companies that are responsible for distributing electricity to different segments of the country and to a large extent even trading is take care of by the Discoms Aggregate Technical & Commercial (AT&C) loss It is the inefficient infrastructure that causes energy losses during transmission and what is extremely disturbing is that while the world’s losses are only 7% in India it’s close to 16.18%so literal - lyone-sixthof the entire power thatwe generate is going towaste for which these government-owned companies are incurring thousands of crores of losses The major 3 losses are: - » » Theft of Electricity (illegal Connection) » » Commercial Losses (inefficient pilling and failure to collect pend - ing payments from Industries) » » Inefficient infrastructure Other Reasons: - » » Installation of Smart-Meter » » Reckless Cross subsidy » » Inefficient Tariff setting process » » Expensive Thermal power purchase Agreements » » Lack of modern technology 76 energetica INDIA- September_2022