Guwahati, Sept. 4: Indian Energy Exchange (IEX), a premier power exchange of the country, has asked the power utilities and industrial units of the Northeast to take cheap and readily available power from them.
The IEX is the country's premier power-trading platform and provides a transparent and automated system enabling efficient price discovery and price risk management for participants. It is approved and regulated by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission and has been operating since June 27, 2008.
"We want to see more participation from the Northeast as the present number of consumers is only 13 from the Northeast which is woefully low as compared to others," Rajesh K. Mediratta, director-business development, IEX, told reporters at the Federation of Industry and Commerce of North Eastern Region (Finer) office here.
He said the vision of IEX is to operate as a state-of-the-art energy marketplace that is transparent, competitive and reliable, for the ultimate benefit of all the stakeholders.
Mediratta said the concept of Open Access in the electricity sector was introduced in the Electricity Act, 2003. The provision of such non-discriminatory open access is a statutory provision to promote competition and thereby enhance quality and reliability of service to customers.
"Both the Assam Power Distribution Company Limited (APDCL) and industrial units in the region having power requirement of above 1MW can opt for open access and buy power from IEX platform cheap power on a day-ahead basis. On the IEX platform, the sellers of power offer their available power for the next day and bidders like APDCL and industries can purchase that power by placing their hourly bids today for the electricity to be consumed tomorrow."
Mediratta said with short-term power rates less than Rs 2.80 per unit, the utilities have immense opportunity to reduce their cost of power procurement. Sources said the states of the Northeast import power at a huge cost as they are power deficient.
Already, a few state electricity boards have managed to make savings to the tune of about Rs 20 crore in a month by optimising their power procurement through open access. Further, even the industrial and commercial establishments are saving 20 to 30 per cent of the power purchase cost by procuring via exchange leveraging open access. Similar saving potential is also possible for the industrial consumers in the Northeast.
Another IEX official said the huge savings made by APDCL would ultimately help them reduce their ever-increasing financial losses and benefits from such initiatives could be passed on to the end consumer. Also, the interested industries can have another source of continuous and cheap power, along with present power from the distribution utility.
The Northeast has another advantage as there is not much congestion in power flow as compared to other regions.
The chairman of Finer, R.S. Joshi, said this is a very welcome step initiated by the IEX to help the industries and power utilities procure cheap and reliable power in a cost-effective way.
A workshop was held in the evening with Finer. It was attended by officials from the Electricity Regulatory Commission, distribution companies, state load despatch centre, transmission companies and industries.
