States Need to do More to Provide Open Access

Planning Commission deputy chairman, Montek Singh Ahluvalia has said “states need to make all-out efforts to expedite reforms in power distribution and do more to provide open access”.
His comments were were made meeting with Western region states which was part of the meeting to develop the 12th five-year plan. Similar comments were made by CERC Chaiman, Dr Pramod Deo in an interview published recently. According to the article Ahluwalia painted a bleak picture of the power sector, especially distribution saying that the mounting losses (to the tune of Rs 65,000 crore) were a matter of concern.
We have regularly highlighted the need to reform distribution and provide open access – this will be a critical reform for the REC markets to succeed and for a significant amount of renewable energy capacity to get added in the country. It is encouraging to see that the issue of open access has visibility at the highest level, and one can hope that steps will be taken to resolve this at the earliest.