By IANS,
Chennai : The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has suo moto issued a show cause notice to the power starved Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) for over-drawing from the grid several times last month, a top CERC official said here Tuesday.
“Maintaining grid discipline is important, failing which the concerned state electricity board (SEB) can be fined under Section 142 of the Electricity Act 2003,” CERC chairman Pramod Deo told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar on wind energy.
“We are also considering fining the concerned official instead of the SEB so that grid discipline is maintained,” Deo said.
The fine for overdrawing from the grid is Rs.100,000.
He said the TNEB has been overdrawing from the grid for the last two months.
In October, the CERC had ordered all the Regional Load Despatch Centres to report within a period of three days the cases of overdrawals from the grid by state utilities when the frequency is less than 49.0 Hz.
The power regulator then said each violation of grid code by way of overdrawal in each time block of 15 minutes when frequency is low constitutes a separate and distinct offence and would accordingly attract penalty proceedings.
The TNEB has been given time till Nov 30 to respond to the notice.
Deo said the first draft of the Renewable Energy Law would be ready soon.
According to him, the issue of power transmission pricing is gaining importance in the case of interstate power transfers by merchant and independent power producers who are not able to sell within their home state.
“The infrastructure cost has to be shared by all the users. The initial charges cannot be loaded on the early users,” Deo said.
Earlier, while addressing Wind India 2008, a conference cum exhibition on wind energy organised by the World Institute of Sustainable Energy (Wise), he said the CERC is now looking at the pricing of renewable energy projects.
“The NTPC has proposed to set up 50MW wind farm. As it is a central utility, the CERC has to fix the tariff.”
He stressed the importance of generation based incentives for wind energy projects.