The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, CERC, has ordered imposing penalty on officers of state load dispatch centres of six states, including Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana, for not complying with its directions.
The commission in its order announced last week said that the officers of SLDC’s of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir not only failed to comply with its directions but also failed to discharge their responsibility under the Grid Code.
The Northern Regional Load Dispatch Centre (NRLDC) had filed a petition with the commission seeking appropriate directions to the constituents of the Northern Region to curb over-drawl and to maintain safety and security of the grid.
In its order, CERC comprising its Chairman Pramod Deo and members A S Bakshi, M Deena Dayalan and S Jayaraman ruled, “We direct the staff of the commission to process the case for initiation of action against the officers in charge of STUs/SLDCs of the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir for imposition of penalty for non-compliance with our directions and the provisions of the Act and the Grid Code.”
During the hearing on August 14, the officers of power utilities of the northern states did not deny the overdrawal from the grid.
Most of them attributed the overdrawal to outage of generation units, shortage of coal, plant maintenance and political pressure.
R K Sharma, Chief Engineer, SLDC, Punjab said the instructions of NRLDC were quickly followed but the power distribution did not comply with the same.
He also submitted SLDC strictly followed the grid code and they were suffering on account of the non-compliance of the grid code by other constituents. He submitted that Commission should issue appropriate directions for strict compliance of the grid code.
It was also claimed that SLDC in the state is not independent and is being controlled by the electricity board or the state transmission utility which is a government owned company.