PRESS RELEASE - III
POWER SCENARIO OF SIKKIM
The crowning achievement of the State Government has been the stability, quality and reliability of power supply in the state. This has been achieved through the planned implementation of various programmes and schemes supported both by Central and the State Government. The state power sector too has initiated the reform process in the state in tune with the other sister states of the nation. The yester year’s scenario of faltering power and rolling blackouts have become the things of past in Sikkim today- it has achieved the onerous task of being the load shedding free State. The fruits of our initial reform efforts have been received by all sections of the society, including rural masses. There is an overall improvement upon the poor voltage profile and rickety distribution system that existed in the state power network. Significant achievement has been made in terms of replacing the overloaded conductors and transformers. All the rural populace having their monthly energy consumption below 50 units are being provided the electricity free of cost. To stabilize the power system in the rural areas number of infrastructures like new 11/11 KV sub-stations has been added along with higher capacity Heavy Duty lines. This has helped in achieving reliable and quality power supply in the rural areas as well.
Yes there still remains more to be done specially towards reducing the loss in our system. Through different initiatives like replacing overloaded conductors, transformers and metering the state power sector has been able to achieve steep decline in Transmission & Distribution losses (T&D losses). The T&D losses have steadily reduced from 56.45% in 2001-02 to all India average of 32.5% as on date. The department has taken major initiatives towards metering of all 11 kV feeders so to asses the feeder losses as well as to localize the leakage point under 100% metering programme of Govt. of India. All the consumers are being metered so as to achieve higher percentage of metered billing and completely eradicate the practice of average billing.
The basic problem of the power sector in the nation is that the distribution business incurs heavy losses, being unable to issue bills for all the energy supplied and unable to collect payment for many of the bills that are issued. As only T&D losses could not reflect the financial health of power utility accurately new methodology has been adopted which takes into account the losses as the difference between the number of units of energy supplied and the number of units of energy for which payment was actually recovered. This new criterion was called Aggregated Technical & Commercial (AT&C) losses. The AT&C loss figure appearing in some local dailies are misleading and far from truth. Some figures appearing in some of the Govt. of India’s documents also have been wrongly projected and accordingly the matter has been brought to the notice of the Ministry of Power, Government of India for correcting the anomalous figure.
The basic purpose of power sector reforms is to reduce these losses and make this sector self-sustaining. Commercial efficiency is the ultimate consumer interest because it means the consumer will not have to bear the cost of the utility’s losses, and this alone will ultimately keep the tariff under control.
To deter the electricity theft and improve the financial health of power sector, the Government of India has adopted the Electricity Act 2003. The Act provides for reform initiatives for improving the health of monolithic power sector by converting them into efficient horizontal entities so as to attract the private sector investments. The Act which is already extended into the state of Sikkim also includes various sections to deal with theft and misuse of power. It provides various legal arm to penalize the persons indulging in criminal acts like theft of energy by way unauthorized use, meter tampering and damaging the utilities property.
The higher AT&C loss is mainly on account of rampant theft and under billing. The department has been doing a lot towards educating the consumers in proper utilization of power, prevent misuse and avoid the un-authorized use. Consumers are requested to clear their electricity dues in time. The raids are being organized and the culprits are being booked while the service connection of defaulters are disconnected.
Even with these achievements the final goal is far; the goal of being the surplus power state, the state with AT&C losses matching the national average by the end of 11th plan. This calls for producing conducive environment in state power sector for attracting investments. Every consumer should be aware of their rights and duties. Everyone should be on guard towards power thefts and non sensical use of precious energy. Lesser the losses lesser cheaper will be the cost of energy.