NEW DELHI: Delhi’s Appellate Tribunal for electricity will on Monday hear the case of Delhi discoms’ (Power Distribution Company of the state) efforts to exit from National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC) Dadri-I, a move that will bring the discoms a step closer to exit from expensive power plants.
Delhi discoms have been making efforts to optimise their power purchase costs, including exit from the costly as well as polluting thermal power plants. The discoms on Sunday said that more than 66 lakh electricity consumers in the national capital will be able to save thousands of crore of rupees if costly thermal power is replaced with substantially cheaper and environment-friendly renewable power from SECI, a government of India enterprise.
Out of total of 15 stations of NTPC that supply power to Delhi, seven stations, including Dadri-I, are old and expensive. Of these, six have completed 25 years from their Commercial date of Operation (COD) and have fully recovered their capital cost and the seventh one will do so in April 2022.
Delhi Discoms had stopped scheduling power from the Dadri-I plant, in November 2020 after it completed 25 years from its COD and had sought exit from it. The NTPC had denied exit to the Discoms, which in turn had approached Central Electricity Regulatory Commission on this issue.
“Average power purchase price from Dadri-I to Delhi consumers is around Rs 6.50/unit against the average price of Rs 3.50/unit power sold by NTPC to consumers in rest of the country,” said a discom official, not wishing to be named.