BHUBANESWAR: Vedanta Limited has justified the January 25 order of the Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) rejecting Gridco’s petition seeking action against it for alleged violation of an earlier order. In a clarification to the news titled “Vedanta refuses power supply, OERC blames Gridco for one day delay” published on February 4,
Vedanta said the State power trading utility has submitted in its annual revenue requirement (ARR) application for 2022-23 and that it enjoys surplus power to the tune of 7037 MU.
Claiming that Gridco has incurred losses of Rs 430 crore on the marginal cost of sale of surplus power into the power market in 2021-22, Vedanta said, “Surrendering of unnecessary power purchase agreements (PPAs) with generators, such as Vedanta’s 600MW power plant (Unit-2) in this instance, would save about Rs 277 crore for Odisha annually.”
“The OERC has also duly noted that Gridco continues to pay fixed charges to other sources like Farakka, Kahalgaon, and Barh without off-taking the power from these plants.
This dead loss of fixed charges can be avoided by the prudent surrendering of surplus PPAs,” said Sonal Choithani, Vedanta’s Chief Communication Officer, Aluminium and Power Business. She said Vedanta’s actual tariff is Rs 2.80/kwh while Gridco has been paying only at Rs 2.5/kwh on an ad-hoc basis.