NEW DELHI: India became a net exporter of electricity in the current financial year, reinforcing the turnaround story in the power sector but also underlining the slack in demand.
India exported 5,798 MU (million units) during the April 2016-February 2017 period to its neighbours, including Myanmar. This is roughly 4% more than the 5,585 MU it imported from Bhutan, data from the Central Electricity Authority showed.
India started cross-border trade in electricity in the mid-1980s, essentially by importing power from hydel projects built in Bhutan and supplying small quantities to Nepal as part of government-to-government deals. Since then, the country has established a mesh of cross-border interlinks for supply to Nepal and Bangladesh.
On an average, India has been importing 5,000-5,500 MUs from Bhutan, while exporting 190MW to Nepal over 12 cross-border lines from Bihar and UP and 600MW to Bangladesh through two interconnects. With rising cross-border wheeling capacity, exports to Nepal and Bangladesh have showed an increase of 2.5 and 2.8 times, respectively, in the last three years. The development also co incides with efforts to ex port coal to Bangladesh -an indication of the situation changing from shortage to surplus. India's power plants were facing acute fuel shortage till three years ago. But steps taken by the Modi government in the last three years have brought it to a position where it needs to look at exports, even if in small quantities, to maintain pace of mining and reduce stocks piling up at mines.
But the expanding supplies beyond borders also point to the slow growth in demand at home. The peak shortage stood at 1.6% in the period till February in the current fiscal against 4.7% in 2014-15, while peak shortage reduced to 0.7% from 4.7% in the same period. At the same time, power plants, on a national average, are opera ting at roughly 60%, down from nearly 65% in 2014-15. But government officials say the power demand has shown a 6% growth and if energy saving from demand-side management measures, such as the LED bulb programme, are taken into consideration, the growth would be 9%.
But undaunted by the condition at home, India is working with Bangladesh on a plan to double the capacity of the existing transmission interconnects and setting up a third link for increasing cross border electricity trade in a bid to widen the regional market as new generation capacities come up on both sides. Sources said the two sides were working to double the capacity of the Baharmapur-Bheramara line to 1,000MW and also examining the possibility of raising the Tripura-Comilla line's capacity to 200MW . There's also a proposal to lay a third line from Assam's Bongaigaon to an interconnect point in Bihar through Bangladesh.
33% quota for women in LPG dealership
The government has introduced 33% reservation for women and eased the criteria of age and education for allotment of cooking gas distributorship as well as simplified norms for awarding petrol pump dealerships. The upper age limit for grant of LPG distributorship has been raised to 60 years and minimum education criteria has been lowered to Class 10, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan told Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. The requirement of finance for setting up gas agency has been done away with and the amount of security deposit has also been reduced.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com