The Planning Commission has said the power ministry has drafted the National Electricity Policy (NEP) poorly. The draft confuses policies with policy objectives, targets and the strategies to achieve those targets, the panel has said.The document, which includes considerable material that does not typically belong to a policy statement, requires a major redrafting effort, it said.The draft policy as presented fails to address core issues relating to the development of the power system-based on optimal utilisation of resources such as coal, natural gas, nuclear substances or materials, hydro and renewable sources of energy.‘‘In fact, there is no talk of ‘optimal utilisation’ of energy resources in the draft policy document,’’ the Planning Commission said in its comment on the draft NEP circulated by the power ministry. The power ministry has put up the draft NEP on its website and sought opinion from various sections.The draft also fails to identify any specific policy initiatives that would address key problems the sector faces. The major problems comprised raising the level of competition in the sector and shifting away from the cost plus pricing regime, removing bottlenecks to open access, handling the legacy of existing contracts, raising the level of redundancy in generation, transmission & distribution and a system operation at 75-80 per cent plant load factor (PLF) that is not a desirable outcome from system stability considerations.The capacity addition programme of 1 lakh MW currently in place for 2012 would not even deliver a generation potential of 1,000 units per capita even without considering the likely growth in population.‘‘If this level of consumption by 2012 is the target, then we need to reassess capacity addition targets and the likely loss levels and include them in the policy objectives,’’ the Planning Commission said.The mere provision of household access does not require ‘‘massive addition to generation capacity and expansion of the transmission & distribution network’’ as stated in the draft NEP. In fact, given current levels of household consumption, especially the level of consumption in rural households, that form the bulk of the household currently without access; a 15-20 per cent expansion of the generation, transmission & distribution system would do the trick. ‘‘This is clearly not a massive task,’’ the Planning Commission opined.Moreover, none of the NEP objectives enunciated in the draft document meet the requirement that the Electricity Act 2003 places on NEP in respect of the optimal resource utilisation for India’s power system development. The Planning Commission wanted to know what is NEP’s real objective — the reasonable, affordable or competitive power.As far as rural electrification is concerned, the Planning Commission has said the section must include policy guidelines related to local level institutions needed to deliver a viable programme, use of available local resources, participation by beneficiaries, demand driven programmes as opposed to supply driven solutions, integration of electricity into rural energy solutions.On hydel generation, a policy has been defined to take up 50,000 MW hydro power. A substantial portion of this huge potential is confined to north and northern eastern states where past experience (since independence) has not been encouraging due to various reasons, which are unique to the north and north eastern regions.‘‘It is not clear what policies will change this reality. What policy initiatives are proposed to enhance state government finances for development of hydro resources?
