Chhattisgarh also on Distribution Franchisee map – New tender/RFP for Baloda Bazar, Raipur

Chhattisgarh also has entered into the race of Power Distribution Franchising with its announcement of one of Raipur O&M Division named Baloda Bazar. The size of the project is smaller than all the recent 9 districts Distribution Franchisee in Madhya Pradesh (See our earlier blog ‘Upcoming Projects of Power Distribution Franchisee in Madhya Pradesh‘). The project is announced under RGGVY program.

CSPDCL, Raipur announced the tender on 30-07-2011 and has 25-08-2011 as bid close date. Comparing to earlier Power Distribution Franchisee tenders, this seems to be the shortest time duration tender, given amongst the first experiments for CSPDCL.

Some key characteristics of the tender:

1. 1. Tenure for Input based Franchisee tender is 5 years
   2. No input minimum benchmarking rates provided
   3. High distribution losses of the order of 63.41% (Annual Input energy of the order of 250 MUs with Revenue billed approx. Rs. 18 crores)
   4. Scattered area 4794 sq.kms
   5. Low Peak demand of 43 MW
   6. High Collection efficiency (almost 100%). (This reflects that unmetered sales is primary cause for high losses)
   7. BPL consumers are highest in numbers (almost 54% of total consumers, but contributing only 12% to total connected load and 0% to revenue collected as totally subsidised)
   8. 18 number of 33 KV substations (total capacity 76.45 MVA, mostly of 3.15MVA power transformer)
   9. Approx. 25784 LT poles and 1273 Distribution Transformers (DTRs)

The qualifications for the bid is easier for new entrants.