India needs graded doses of power tariff increase to ensure thesustainability of distribution companies, a senior power expert said hereThursday.
Addressingthe conference "Ensuring India's Power Future", former powersecretary Anil Razdan said, "India needs graded doses of power tariffincrease to ensure distribution companies do not fail."
Accordingto Razdan, such large losses arise from aggregate technical and commerciallosses (AT and C) and low power tariffs.
"Currentlycumulative distribution losses amount to Rs.200,000 crore. Only last year'slosses came to Rs.39-40,000 crore," Razdan said.
AT andC losses, which are the sum of technical and commercial losses, and theshortage due to non-realisation of total billed amount, currently amount to 26percent, and according to Razdan these are urgently required to be reduced to15 percent.
Certainstates have up to 50 percent power loss on account of AT and C losses.
Razdanalso suggested a specific increase of power tariff to Rs.7 per unit from theprevailing around Rs.3 per unit.
Warningabout a future scenario if there are no reforms made, Razdan said that no powerwas more expensive than priced power.
Speakingearlier, Leena Srivastava, executive director for operations, The Energy andResources Institute (TERI), which has organised the two-day power conference,said that there was very little choice for the country other than increasingenergy efficiency.
"Besidesenergy efficiency, the renewable energy mix in power generation will need to goup to 30-40 percent by 2030", Srivastava said.
Meanwhile,India's Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati has opined that the Central ElectricityRegulatory Commission (CERC) has the authority to revise or regulate tariffsadopted, based on competitive bidding.
Manyprivate power producers are keen to renegotiate the tariffs following thesudden hike in coal prices in major producing countries such as Australia,South Africa and Indonesia.