Delhi can sell surplus power: Government

Attributing the rampant electricity outages in the city to poor distribution network of the power discoms, the Delhi government said on Friday that it has nearly 1,500 to 2,000 MW of surplus electricity and may even sell the surplus supply to power-starved states. Miffed over poor performance of the two BSES distribution companies, city power minister Satyendar Jain will meet the firm’s chairman Lalit Jalan on Wednesday. Mr Jain had earlier written a letter to Anil Ambani, the chairperson of Reliance-ADAG, telling him to discuss the state of his company’s two discoms.

Mr Jain told reporters that the city was facing power outages due to “local faults” and not due to shortage of electricity. “We can even sell power to states across the country in view of the surplus availability of around 1,500 to 2,000 MW here and the prevailing costly power purchase agreements with the private distribution companies. We have written to all,” Mr Jain said.

The national capital had on May 20 recorded its peak power demand of 6,188 MW. Intense heat and high demand for electricity had crippled the power infrastructure and led to outages in many parts of the city, which the city officials said was due to the inability of the distribution networks to handle “overloading.”

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had recently lashed out at the discoms over power cuts and Mr Jain had shot off a letter to Mr Ambani highlighting “atrocious” performance of his two discoms.

Reliance ADAG-owned BSES entities — BRPL (BSES Rajdhani Power Limited) and BYPL (BSES Yamuna Power Limited) — supply electricity to around 12 lakh and 16 lakh customers, respectively. The city’s power sector was privatised in 2002. However, the discoms maintain that the fault lies with the transmission network and that they had actually brought down energy loss levels to around 13 per cent in the city.