March 20, 2013

The Power Ministry is considering setting up a National Power Committee for ensuring stricter grid discipline among the States and penalize the ones overdrawing electricity from the grid.

“The Power Ministry is working on it and CERC and CEA would also be part of the exercise. Not only penalty, it would also look at co-ordination and the Government would constitute a National Power Committee,” a Power Ministry official told PTI.

Power sector regulator Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) and sectoral planning body Central Electricity Authority (CEA) will be consulted while constituting this Committee, the official added.

“The issue is that the penalty is very negligible, (there is) need for stringent penalty, it would be part of the amendment to the Electricity Act 2003 mainly for grid,” the official said, adding that the proposal is at an advanced stage.

This comes in the wake of the country witnessing its worst-ever power crisis last year, which left a large part of India powerless and crippled essential services for several hours.

The northern grid collapsed in the wee hours on July 30 last year, leaving nearly seven states without electricity for several hours.

This was followed by another crisis the very next day, when the three inter-connecting, northern, eastern and north-eastern, transmission grids in the country tripped, plunging over 20 states into darkness. The power was restored in a few hours after the triple-grid failure.

As per the findings of the report of the committee set up to investigate the grid failure, the inter-regional corridors (transmission links that carry power) had weakened due to multiple outages.