Gujarat suggests power pooling to resolve country’s energy woes

Can pooling of power generated from different sources help resolve the acute shortage of electricity in different parts of the country? It definitely can, believes the state government, which is pressing the Central government to give the proposal a try. Power pooling has not been tried in the country so far.

Barring Gujarat, which is a power-surplus state, other states are unable to meet their power demand. Be it highly industrialised states such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, or Bihar and UP in the Hindi heartland, power woes are a common problem.

At the same time, Gujarat has been forced to cut down power generation owing to inadequate domestic gas supplies from the past several months.

"We have been producing around 700 MW less than the installed gas-based power generation capacity because of gas shortage from many months. This is a significant quantity of power which other struggling states can use to meet their requirements if a mechanism for power pooling can be worked out," DJ Pandian, principal secretary, energy & petrochemicals department, told DNA.

State energy minister Saurabh Patel said he supported a mechanism for power pooling, and added that he had made the suggestion during the recent power ministers' conference in New Delhi.

"The Centre could work out a mechanism where a central PSU could import gas (LNG) for running plants to their full capacity. The power generated could be pooled with power generated from all central sector power plants," Patel had said at the conference.

Pandian too had recently written to the union power secretary and suggested power pooling. He said there was no point in wasting power, and questioned as to why millions of homes should remain in darkness when power generation capacity was there.

"The power generated using R-LNG will be much more expensive than power produced using domestic gas or other sources. But, the cost can be pooled so that the burden is shared among the users. In this manner, electricity can be supplied to more people," he said.

According to Patel's proposal, the power generated using imported gas could be equitably allocated to states in proportion to their share from central sector generating plants. "Equitable allocation of power would help in reducing electricity shortage in the country," Patel said.