Power transmission should be a priority in Mumbai, say experts

Many residents of Mumbai and its suburbs were taken by surprise last week when they had to face power cuts after a Tata Power-operated unit tripped due to some technical problem.

Power supply in the city, where such outages are rare, have since moved towards normalcy, but experts say authorities must work towards improving the city's transmission capacity to avoid such problems.

Kameshwara Rao, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers, says that Mumbai must have alternative supply options in times of power failures. "Over the years there is so much focus on the revenue requirement and tariffs that the money available to utilities in order to invest in the spare capacity has come down," he says. "If you have a strong reserve margin and enough redundant transmission capacity you can withstand shocks."

The spare capacity would only come into play when there is sufficient transmission capacity. According to a statement by Tata Power, last week, when Unit 5 of 500 megawatt in Trombay tripped, the company managed to bridge the gap of about 200 MW by gathering supply from hydro power stations. A shortage of 300 MW remained.

Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd, or Mahadiscom, has a standby agreement with power suppliers wherein they would ideally supply about 250 MW electricity in emergency situations. This could not happen due to congested transmission lines, a problem that authorities have failed to address despite the growing requirements of the city.

The city needs about 2,500 MW to 3,000 MW of electricity and this is growing at three to five per cent a year. In comparison, peak demand in Delhi is about 5300 MW, which is primarily sourced from outside the national capital.

Amulya Charan, a member of the power committee of industry group FICCI, points out that if new generation capacity cannot be permitted to come up within the city, it has to be set up somewhere else and transmission lines have to be brought in.

"The city was being run with a very stable alliance between Tata Power and Reliance, but the units are getting old. Once in a while they do trip and there is no transmission capacity at all," says Charan. "That is where the whole problem is," says Charan, adding, "All you have to do is open up the records and see how many times these utilities have applied for more transmission capacity."

With new projects such as the metro line and several other infrastructural works in progress across the city, power consumption will only go up further. While alternative power sources are being talked about, there are issues with that as well.