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'Centre to invest Rs 400 billion in power reforms'

The government has chalked out a massive Rs 400-billion investment in the transmission and distribution services as a part of reforms in the power sector over a span of three years.

"To begin with, we will allot Rs 20 billion under the Accelerated Power Development Programme (APDP) to all states on an annual basis, half of which has been sanctioned by the Cabinet and rest will be leveraged by loans from Power Finance Corporation Ltd or other financial institutions," Union Power Minister Suresh Prabhu said.

He was visiting the Western Regional Electricity Board in Bombay on Monday.

Moreover, the Centre would also release Rs 90 billion in three years allocation under the Tenth and Eleventh Plan schedule, he added.

The Rs 400-billion investment would also include improvement of plant load factors of the existing electricity boards, 100 per cent metering, energy audits, separation of the T&D and generation of the state electricity boards and keep a separate maintenance of accounts, he added.

"Efforts will also be made to improve the machine capacity of hydro-generating power plants and in qualitative improvement of the life spans of thermal power stations in the country," the minister informed.

The ministry has also convened a meeting of all state chief ministers to be headed by Prime Minister A B Vajpayee next month to discuss the alarming situation of power shortage in India and also the power reforms, he added.

"The installed annual capacity of India is 100,000 mw but due to low utility structure our T&D losses amount to around 60 per cent," Prabhu said.

He said the current quality of power produced by our SEBs was 'not up to the mark and we also face the crucial problem of evacuation of surplus power from one of its regional grids to another'.

"The commercial losses of the SEBs are to the tune of a Rs 800 billion with Rs 400-500 billion due to slippages," the minister said, adding that the boards' dues range to a massive Rs 260 billion to the central electricity public sector undertakings.

Referring to the functioning of the four regional power grids, Prabhu said that the ministry would soon take a decision to set up a national power grid which would have regional entities and sub linkages spread out throughout the country.

"We are seriously considering the national power grid proposal as it will also help us divert power, from states with a large amount of surplus like the North-Eastern ones," he added.

He said that with the experience of northern power grid's failure on January 2, the government wanted to take adequate precautionary measures to avoid the 'black out' in the entire region.

"Northern grid's black out has taught us that power in one state generating power has an immediate cascading effect of the neighbouring states with a possible collapse of power in the entire region," Prabhu said.

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