The draft tariff guidelines were issued last December for a five-year period beginning this April. The draft guidelines said that incentives given to power projects should be linked to PLF (plant load factor) and not PAF (plant availability factor).
PLF is the capacity at which plants are run in accordance to demand, while PAF is the measure of power that could be generated at full capacity of a plant made available to distribution utilities.
While a generator has control over PAF, PLF depends on fuel availability and offtake of electricity by discoms. At a time when fuel shortage is the norm rather than exception, the CERC norm is bound to hit all generators alike.
NTPC also challenged the CERC norms changing the norm for calculating the energy charge component of tariff. Since 1948, this component was calculated on the basis of gross calorific value, or heating capacity, of coal considered at the point it is fed into the boiler-fire.
Under revised regulation, GCV is to be considered at the time coal is received by a power plant. NTPC opposed this on the ground that the coal contains impurities such as stones and moisture when it is received at the plant that have to be removed, resulting in reduced quantity that can actually be used.
Rejecting NTPCs plea, CERC said it followed a clear procedure in working out the guidelines and said the new norms were framed around the promise of a 15.5% assured return on investment by generators.
NTPC said the company credit rating would suffer under the new norms, leading to higher interest rate and lower availability of loans. This would push up interest costs and lower capacity addition to about 9,660 mw. The tax reimbursement clause on grossed RoE (return on equity) would also impede internal resource generation by Rs 1,100 crore.
http://ift.tt/1i0dy5h Federal reserve,NTPC,interest rate,Electricity Regulatory Commission
0 comments:
Post a Comment