Govt to act on discom dues after elections

NEW DELHI: The government plans to get strict with the Reliance discoms, BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna, from December for their failure to pay the generation companies, IPGCL and PPCL, and also the transmission utility, Delhi Transco. Sources say unless the discoms clear their dues, the government will have to regulate supply to them.

Similar threats have been made in the past, but this time the government is waiting for the elections to get over as snapping power supply could lead to blackouts across the city. Power department officials say the companies owe approximately Rs 2,800 crore to the generating companies and another Rs 1,100 crore to Transco, and . Over the past few weeks, they have paid Rs 200 crore to the gencos. But, officers point out, the two firms have defaulted on payment since 2010-11 unlike the third discom, Tata Power Delhi.

"The discoms have a lot of regulatory assets piled up which have just been accumulating and this has to be addressed at the proper level," said power secretary R K Verma. "At the same time, they have been defaulting on current dues, and if they fail to pay immediate outstanding dues, we will be left with no choice but to take action."

Verma hinted that the action could be on the lines of Delhi Metro's takeover of the Airport Express Line after Reliance stopped operations. "We have sent a number of me-morandums to the discoms to discuss a payment schedule but they never have an answer. They only talk about their outstanding dues," said Verma, adding, "DERC has directed that the August-September dues have to be cleared but the discoms have not paid. If they are in such a precarious financial situation, why doesn't their promoter, Reliance Group, bail them out?''

with thanks : Times of India : LINK : for detailed news.

GK-II residents hit with hefty water bills

NEW DELHI: Shubhra Banerjee received a water bill of Rs 4.23 lakh for a period of two months this year. Banerjee lives with her mother in a flat in Greater Kailash-II. Averaging about 35 units a month, their consumption for the period between April and June is an astounding 8,740 units. Complaints to Delhi Jal Board (DJB) have yielded no results.

Darshan Lal Madan, a resident of GK-II's E-block, has to pay a bill of Rs 3 lakh for a period of three months while Ajay Gupta, another resident of E-block, has to pay a bill of Rs 1.27 lakh.

DJB claims that its billing system has improved substantially after it implemented a new system last year and the consumers can bid farewell to elevated bills by the end of this year. This, however, has not made any difference to several consumers who have been slapped with bills running into lakhs.

Banerjee says that she has been chasing DJB officials but the only response she has received is a DJB staffer asking for Rs 30,000 to "settle the matter". "I had been calling their office and all I was told is that they are looking into my case," she added.

Reflecting more poorly on DJB's consumer records, Banjeree's connection is in the name of one Jaswinder Singh. "We brought the property from him in 1976 and have been writing since then to the water utility to change the name in its records. Again, nothing has happened," she said.

Contrary to what some DJB officials said might be a result of meter change, residents who have complained of escalated bills say their meters have not been changed and this is a most likely a result of incorrect meter reading.

with thanks : Times of India : LINK : for detailed news.

After 5 years, power promises remain on paper

NEW DELHI: Power remains a vexed issue for both politicians and citizens ahead of the assembly polls. In the past five years, the government made several promises, including round-the-clock supply and enhanced internal electricity generation. TOI reviews how well it has kept them.

Generation deficit and gas shortage

In 2008, Delhi generated approximately 1,600MW from five power stations and sourced the rest of its requirement from central sector power stations. New plants—Pragati Power Phase II in Bamnauli and Pragati Power Phase III in Bawana—were due to come up ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Additionally, the Delhi government tied up with Aravali Super Thermal Power Station to get 750 MW.

But the 2010 Games came and went by, and the promised power plants could not start generation. Gas shortage crippled the new plants and, even today, Delhi gets barely 250MW from the 1,500MW power plant in Bawana. The Bamnauli project has been shelved indefinitely.

Discoms like Tata Power (formerly NDPL), meanwhile, tried to supplement generation by setting up their own plants but they were also hit by the gas crisis. The 108MW plant in Rithala was conceived to help the discom source peak power at the height of summer and winter. But ever since it became operational, it has barely produced 10-20% of its installed capacity.

Officials say keeping the plant running with less gas turned out to be costlier than expected. Discoms have also refused to buy power from the Aravali station claiming it is too expensive.

"In reality, generation has hardly improved since 2008. The Indraprastha power plant was shut down and new plants like Bawana can barely produce any power with the gas crisis. Delhi is still forced to procure most of its power from outside states," said an expert.

With thanks : Times of India : LINK : for detailed news.

Health Camp

A Health Camp has been organised by Mrs Meera Sabharwal at Geeta colony, today, timings 10 AM to 2 PM.

Inflation 2013 !

School children's plying with own life ?

Today at 7.37 am near pusa road, I had seen some school children's were playing with his own life. They were hanging on the back side of the DTC Bus. Is there no check to stop them by traffic police ? Are we waiting for any mishap to happen ?

Ajay Gupta

How to register RWA ?

If you want to get your RWA registered, you have to do as below :

Minimum of 7 persons can form the RWA. First decide a name & make the Mamorandum of association & Rules of regulations. These are to be submitted duly attested by a notary alongwith two affidavits to the Registrar of societies. Remember you have to attach a copy of voter ID / Pan card of all the desirous persons / office bearers list added as above.

Specimen of mamorandum of association, Rules & regulations, affidavits can be viewed at

http://www.rwabhagidari.com/registerRWA.htm

Water front : Press cuttings : S A Naqvi

Petrol prices UP again ?????

All the news papers were reporting that Price of Petrol is expected to go down by Rs 1.50 appx. But Govt has again hiked the price by Rs. 1.83. Why so when the value of Dollar is better than worse, while fear of Syria war seems postponed, while crude oil prices are down now.

Various press cuttings today !

Delhi discoms not paying bills, says Tehri Hydro Dev Corp

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 10:  

Tehri Hydro Development Corporation (THDC) India Ltd has registered complaints with the Union Power Ministry against two Delhi electricity distribution utilities (discoms) for not paying the generator for electricity supplied by it.

In the wake of this, the power producer has requested the Ministry to allow it to divert the electricity it currently supplies to Delhi to other Northern States. THDC is a joint venture between Centre and Uttar Pradesh and supplies electricity to nine Northern States from the 1,000 MW Tehri and 400 MW Koteshwar hydro projects.

The two discoms – BSES Yamuna Power Ltd (BYPL) and BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd (BRPL) – have total outstanding of Rs 183.23 crore with THDC. Of this, Rs 132.56 crore is outstanding for more than 60 days.

During the past two years, the two Delhi discoms had been continuously defaulting and not paying on time, the Government power company told the Ministry. BYPL released Rs 2 crore on July 27, after a gap of 11 months as a result of requests and meetings at the senior-most level.

Similarly, the other discom, BRPL, has been releasing monthly payment equivalent to only one month of billing amount, and the backlog is not been squared up, THDC told the Ministry.

When contacted, a BSES official said that the dues that BYPL and BRPL owe to the generating companies have built up on account of a non-cost reflective tariff and unrestrained build-up of regulatory assets by the electricity regulator.

“The discoms’ cost of buying power from gencos (generating companies) has increased by around 300 per cent, a cost on which discoms have no control. On the other side, the retail tariff in the corresponding period has risen by only around 70 per cent, which has resulted in accumulation of a large revenue gap. We are making payment to the power generators on a best effort basis and try to make the current payments,” the official explained.

According to industry watchers, this kind of issue is not new. This is because the power purchase cost, which is not a controllable parameter, and is allowed by the law to be offset through a surcharge. However, the surcharge formula adopted by the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) does not cover the entire cost.

According to DERC’s statutory advice issued to the Delhi Government in February 2013, Delhi discoms had regulatory assets of over Rs 19,500 crore. Of these, the regulatory assets of BSES discoms are worth Rs 15,000 crore.

“Due to the persistent revenue gap highlighted above, BSES discoms are severely constrained to meet their day-to-day working capital and are frequently resorting to repeated lending from financial institutions to fund its shortage of working capital as well as its capex requirements,” said an industry watcher.

with thanks : The Hindu : LINK