\n<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nSo the power sources, per unit cost, units to be made available etc. were all decided by the OERC. Had everything gone as per the plan, Gridco would not have bled losses. But that was not to be. OHPC – the most vital source that moderated Gridco’s total purchasing cost to a reasonable level – faltered in making committed supply to the Gridco. For a period OHPC’s supply almost dried up as if its reservoir beds have gone bare. At the last count, OHPC managed to produce just 4,136.139 MU till 25 March, 2010. With only six days remaining of this financial year, the OHPC is expected to produce another 60 MU. This will take OHPC’s total energy production for the year 2009-10 to about 4,200 MU. This is a mere two-third of what was expected from it. Because of this huge deficit supply from the OHPC, the Gridco was forced to scout for other suppliers to plug the gap. That has undone all calculations and caused severe losses to Gridco. As the other sources from which Gridco gets supply are already stretched, they are in no position to make additional supply to Gridco. Even if they make supply, the cost will be many times more than that of OHPC’s power. Now, Gridco has no other way than to purchase power from wily producers at exorbitant cost. Some privately owned CGPs, with whom the Gridco has purchase agreement, charge OERC fixed rate up to the agreement level. Beyond that… it’s the producer’s fiefdom – to grab profits as much as possible from the Gridco’s misery. The negotiations are held hardly on equal terms. The OERC plays no role there; it does not have any jurisdiction to play either. Naturally, power rates spiral with the summer heat. In such a similar situation, the Gridco purchased power at more than 800 paise per unit last year.<\/span><\/span> The situation is ripe to worsen this year. Gridco has lost substantial units of very low cost energy – hydro power – and is now compensating that loss with very high cost energy.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/strong> <\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe above explains the situation very nicely. Mr. Pandia then gives the data on the reservoir situation and says that they are in better shape (based on March 1 data) than previous years. But then he speculates that some "<\/span><\/span>cleaver ploy is cooking." I think his analysis in the excerpt above explains the situation nicely. In short the initial OERC tariff was based on some assumption on how much power will come from OHPC. Now that OHPC did not supply that amount of power the last year (leading to 1000+ crore loss to OERC) and may not supply that amount this year, obviously OERC has to revise its tariff based on the new reality of how much power will come from where and how much will it cost<\/u>.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\nMoreover, all these have not much to do with whether Odisha is a power surplus state or not. There is now a power market in the country. It is a question of <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/strong>balancing the cost of power and the revenue from the consumers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the last several months various media reports have made the following points regarding the power situation in Odisha: There is a power crisis in Odisha and the government plans to do power cuts. GRIDCO will get a 1000 crore loan from the government. I.e., it is in a bad situation. OERC hiked the power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[351,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gridco","category-hydro-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orissalinks.com\/orissagrowth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orissalinks.com\/orissagrowth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orissalinks.com\/orissagrowth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orissalinks.com\/orissagrowth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orissalinks.com\/orissagrowth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orissalinks.com\/orissagrowth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orissalinks.com\/orissagrowth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orissalinks.com\/orissagrowth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orissalinks.com\/orissagrowth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}