Energy

India is the world’s third largest producer and third largest consumer of electricity. The Indian Power Industry is one of the largest and most important industries in India. The three major pillars of power sector are Generation, Transmission, and Distribution.

Power is generated by State utilities, Central utilities and/or Private players from various sources like thermal, hydroelectric, nuclear and other alternate renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass etc. The electricity sector is dominated by fossil fuels, in particular coal, which during the 2018-19 fiscal year produced about three-quarters of the country’s electricity. The government is making efforts to increase investment in renewable energy.

The transmission of power in India is handled entirely by Public Sector Units namely the State Electricity Boards and the Power Grid Corporation of India.

Indian Power Distribution Utilities is facing the mounting debts to the tune of over 2.6 lakh crore. This is primarily due to high accumulated AT&C losses (nearly 20%) and inadequately maintained distribution network of the State Utilities. Hence, loss reduction in Indian Utilities is being driven at all levels in Central, State Discom and Private.

To improve the situation of power distribution in India various initiatives starting with Delicensing of Generation, Enacting Law of Regulations, understanding the need of transmission and distribution reforms, APDRP to UDAY has been tried by the policy makers. However, these efforts have been partly successful in the generation and the transmission domains but made a little headway in the distribution space which is still reeling under tremendous losses

To revive the distribution sector, the Government is also taking efforts to make way for private players participating in the distribution sector in different reforms as Multi Licensing model, Outsourcing Activities, Full Privatization, Franchisee Models, etc. Various experts are of the opinion that in the coming years, the Distribution Franchisee model is expected to grow manifold, thereby improving the power distribution scenario of the country. Power Distribution Franchisee as an evolving Public Private Partnership (PPP) model has picked traction since 2009 after successful demonstration by Torrent Power Ltd. at Bhiwandi, Maharashtra, which got operational in 2007. The model has grown gradually in the last 5 years, across few states; with potential new states had proposed to adopt the franchisee model in coming years.

pManifold work across the value chain of power sector and provides the services as below:

• Bid advisory for Power Distribution Franchisees (DFs)
• Vendor opex model development for DFs
• CSAT for monitoring services quality delivery
• DF performance audits; Tariff assessments
• Stakeholder Engagement, Best practices benchmarking and Policy Advocacy via IUKAN, World Utility Summit, etc.
• Loss reduction business models and POCs – smart metering, smart grid, ESCO, EE motor, DT Active repairs, UDC etc.
• Policy Advocacy and Best practices adoption in Power Quality
• POC development for Wire & Retail segregation …