Mr. Ajoy Mehta shared his vision on Power Distribution Franchisee models in India

Mr. Ajoy Mehta, MD,
MSEDCL

Mr. Ajoy Mehta, MD, MSEDCL, in a recent Business Technology Conclave of IUKAN extended strong support to Power Distribution Franchisee model, for country to build sustainable power utilities. He shared his experience and vision for further strengthening of the Power DF model. A brief excerpt in form of Q&As from his Vision session at IUKAN is shared below. (The views here are personal views, and not to be associated with any company in any forms)

Q: What role of privatization you see in Indian Discoms?

A: Electricity Act, 2003 made Generation de-licensed, opening to private participation, but in T&D continued to require Licensing, opening it to part-privatization, but not allowing complete private ownership of assets.

• A Discom performs following core functions 1) sourcing of power 2) tariff filing and reporting to Regulators 3) various customer services like MBC etc. 4) distribution and fault management 5) and HR management.
• Out of above, sourcing of power & tariff filling and reporting are broadly considered as prerogative of Licensee only, and hence not kept in scope of Franchisee.
• The strength of private company is to handle customer relationship and bring operational efficiency, and hence remaining above activities including like MBC, IT, and Customer services, O&M, HRM etc. were made in scope of DF.

As Discoms are reeling under the high distribution loss and revenue deficit, the one way of improving the Distribution of electricity is to rightly involve private companies in the sector.     

Leveraging EE programmatic financing for expediting AT&C loss reduction

While Indian Discoms continue to focus on AT&C loss reduction, which in many cases stands to the order of greater than 60%, and lot of private efforts is getting attracted in, it is clear that this is a massive Energy Efficiency (EE) drive. There are various talked instruments for EE financing, but not much has been realised by Indian Discoms. With this Rahul Bagdia from pManifold team spoke to Mr. Vinod Kala, Founder & MD, Emergent Ventures India. He has over 25 years of industry experience, centered on Clean Energy, Strategic Management and Finance. Over the years, he has helped launch a number of new businesses in Clean Technologies including Renewable Energy Aggregators in wind, hydro and bio-mass energy, LED Appliances, Sustainable Farming etc.


This interview focuses upon 'If and how Indian Discoms could leverage & possibly expedite their AT&C loss reduction drive through potential financing from EE programmatic interventions'. The below shared are the author's personal views and not to be associated with any of their company's association.