Stricter penalties in Electricity (Amendment) Act: Piyush Goyal (Power Minister)
The Power Ministry will soon come up with the Amendment in the Electricity Act 2003, which will have strict penalties. The proposed amendment is likely to be presented in the parliament during ongoing winter session.
“We’re looking at presenting amendments to the Electricity Act in this session of parliament, for strengthening the penalty provisions manifold in the renewable purchase obligations, to make these more stringent,” said Mr. Piyush Goyal, Minister of Power, in a statement.
He said that the current renewable purchase obligation (RPO) is also being re-looked and added, “Earlier, we had certain set of targets till 2022, which we are bringing forward to 2019, we hope that 15 per cent of the renewable power purchase obligation can be enforced to 2015”.
The concept of RGO will also be introduced in the act, in which companies setting up new power projects will have obligation to generate 10% Renewable Energy component.
The amendment will focus on bringing RE into mainframe, as the REC market has not been performing well and there is little RPO compliance by the obligated entities. The RGO will help the govt. to meet its ambitious target of 100 GW solar power by 2022 with wind capacity addition of 10 GW per year.
The provision for forecasting and scheduling of Renewable Energy is expected in act. Also the concept of ‘Must Run’ and ‘Deemed Generation’ are also expected to be part of this amendment. The idea of ‘Hydro Purchase Obligation’ and the provision of giving Renewable status to large Hydro projects can also be included.
It will be interesting to see how this amendment affects the market performance, before the proposed Renewable Energy Act is passed early next year.
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