AP, TN, Punjab and Meghalaya succeeds in cutting power losses

Our Corporate Bureau
21 July 2005

Chennai: Four states — Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Meghalaya successfully reduced their aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) power loss. The AT&C is the difference between energy input and energy realised. For the above four states achieved AT&C loss of less than 25 per cent during 2003-04.

This was possible as these states undertook measures like feeder and consumer metering, regulatory mechanism for tariff, computerisation, among others.

The laggards are Jharkand, Bihar, Mizoram, Manipur, Sikkim and Jammu & Kashmir with AT&C losses of over 60 per cent. Amongst the private utilities, Noida Power with 10.49 per cent and BSES, Mumbai, with 11.32 per cent have the minimum AT&C losses whereas BYPL, Delhi, suffers from a loss of 50.12 per cent.

The 'consultative committee of member of Parliament' for the ministry of power recently deliberated on the measures to cut down the AT&C losses suffered by the power utilities.

Presiding the meeting the union minister for power P M Sayeed said the focus should not only on the losses in the distribution sector but also on curbing losses at the distribution transformer level which is the interface between the consumer and the distribution utilities.

Though the transmission and distribution (T&D) losses have come down to 32.53 per cent in 2003-04 from 33.98 per cent in 2001-02 this parameter was not capturing the entire gamut of metering, billing and collection efficiency. Further it is also difficult to segregate the technical and commercial losses. As a result the AT&C measure has come into being.