BW BUSINESSWORLD Power for All Summit 2015

BW Businessworld had organised a high level power industry conclave on Power For All Summit 2015 today at The Grand, New Delhi. With 200 dignitaries the conference explored the huge growth opportunities for the largely untapped India’s Power Sector with exchange of ideas and opinions between government, industry, domain experts and citizens alike, while highlighting best practices.

The day witnessed a motivating keynote address from the chief guest Mr. Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy, Government of India while the special address was delivered by Mr. Tarun Kapoor, Joint Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. While speaking at the Summit, Mr. Goyal said “Events like Power for All Summit where you engage and discuss relevant issues are truly an education for us all and help us to device better mechanism to speed up our efforts to achieve 100 percent electrification targets.

Referring to recently launched Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna, he said, “UDAY is an entirely bottom up scheme which has emerged out of the culmination of the engagements with bankers, discoms, power producers, consumers bodies, state governments and all the other stakeholders over a long period of time.” Mr. Goyal appealed transmission companies in the country to play a leadership role in explaining any loopholes in bidding and evaluation process or its technical aspects etc, keeping in view the theme of the summit, “Power for All”, the content driven agenda saw in-depth quality discussions on topics ranging from opportunities and challenges in generating the power demand through investment outlook to efficient transmission & distribution in India.

Mr. Tarun Kapoor, Joint Secretary, MNRE in his special address said “Grid connected rooftop solar power is the most important single sector as far as renewables are concerned; 40,000 MW project requires an investment of up to 4 lakh crore. This is a big opportunity for all business." He also encouraged start-up businesses to come forward and invest as 'to create and sustain such a big market where everyone has to put in the effort required.' So far 20 state regulators have issued connections, and 17 states have issued policies in this regard.

The power packed conference had representations of dynamic speakers including A.K Ahuja, Executive Director, Corporate Planning, NTPC ; Mrs. Seema Gupta, COO, Central Tranmission Utilities & Cost Engineering, Power Grid Corporation of India; Mr. Sanjeev Gupta, Managing Director; NexGen Financial Solutions’ Mr. Gaetan Tiberghien, Principal Investment Officer, International Finance Corporation (IFC), World Bank Group; Dr. Ashok Haldia, Managing Director & CEO, PTC India Financial Services Ltd.; Rajesh Bansal, Senior Vice President, BSES Rajdhani power; Ghanshyam Prasad, Director, Ministry of Power; B.V Rao, Director-Technical, IREDA; Manish Aggarwal, Partner and Head of Energy, KPMG in India amongst others.

The key take away from the Summit was that there is a need to fill in the gaps and link power generation, transmission, distribution and collection and Government policies, attractiveness index and readily availability of debt are the three important factors required for investment in power sector. The event was supported by India Power and SREI as Associate Partners, BSE India as Silver Partner, and Episode as Gift Partner. The conclave was covered by EPC World, BW SMARTCITIES & Energetica India as Media Partners.