The 3rd edition of Power Sector India Roundtable 2013 was successfully organized on 30th August 2013 at School of Petroleum Management, PDPU, Gandhinagar.
The event was graced by Hon’ble Minister, Shri Saurabh Patel, Government of Gujarat. He started his address by highlighting current issues that has been grappling the sector.
He talked about the issue of coal supply, which is the primary fuel and has been powering the country for many decades. He expressed his concern that, if the coal supply issues are not sorted as early as possible then it would become the biggest impediments for a prosperous Indian power sector.
He also highlighted that there is a disaster waiting in the form of Gas Price hike in 2014 and this decision is going to turn every Gas power plant in this country unviable to function and run, thus making all of them Non Performing Assets.
Senior members of leading organizations across the Power Sector in India were present for the event as speakers and industry listeners. The event had participation from Government of Gujarat, GUVNL, GSECL, GETCO, Tata Power, SBI Caps, PwC, KPMG, Delloite, IEEMA, IL&FS, Feedback Infra, TVRLS, etc.
First session of the roundtable addressed the Impact of new developments such as, New Gas pricing mechanism, new regulatory mechanism in Distribution sector, Financial Restructuring of State DISCOMs & Imported coal pricing mechanism of India UMPPs.
Session chair Shri Raj Gopal, IAS, MD, Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited, spoke about how gas and coal are important commodities in energy generation in India. He discussed about the scenario of gas based power plant in India. He also talked about the Ministry of Power’s latest introduction of 5 point plan which would include pooling of gas, special tariff for gas generated plant, parity of power plant with fertilizer sector and a few more. He further mentioned that the gas based power plants are the immediate solutions to current energy problems as wind or solar sources of energy are quite unreliable.
The second session revolved around addressing new initiatives to revamp Indian Power Sector. This session had brought various stakeholders of Indian Power sector such as, Manufacturers, Developers, Power Traders, and Consultants, on the same platform. The speakers have suggested various new initiatives to be taken, such as, change in Standard Bidding Documents, Bidding preferences to domestic equipment manufacturers, Change of UI system in power trading to Ancillary markets,increase the use of HVDC transmission lines and use of feeder automation to reduce the electricity theft etc.
The session chair Shri S. K. Negi, MD, Gujarat Energy Transmission Corporation Limited initiated initiated the second session with the discussion on the brighter side of the present scenario of the power sector. This included restructuring in the power sector, rise in per capita consumption of electricity, increased generation capacity, information technology development in power sector, capacity addition in transmission, encouragement in renewable energy generation, power trading or power exchanges. He further talked about the issues faced by the present scenario of the power sector which include restrictive development, fuel supply shortage, modernization of load dispatch centres, etc.
Mr.Shubhranshu Patnaik, Partner, Deloitte & Touche India, elaborated on the concerns with extent bidding process which included problems regarding allocation of mines, coal reserve estimation and assumption at stage of bidding. He further suggested that the part supply needs to be taken care from other sources in order to address the fuel supply issues.
Mr. V D Apte, Principal Advisor, Energy Division, Feedback Infra Private Limited, opined that in the present scenario, the distribution utilities fail because of diverse interest of stake holders and gap between what customers perceive and what the service industries are claiming to offer. Also in the existing model, the high AT&C losses account for the financial gap which is present in the distribution utilities.
The third session of roundtable concentrated towards Human Resource Management of Indian Power Sector. Various burning challenges were discussed in this session, such as – Talent Acquisition Challenges, Developing high performance work system, improving employee productivity, and need of training & development in Indian Power Sector.
The session chair Dr. D M Pestonjee, GSPL chair professor, SPM, initiated the discussion and provided brief highlight on current challenges of Indian Power Sector.
Mr. T V Rao, Ex. Professor IIM Ahmadabad, Chairman TVRLS spoke on the various factors that affect performance of individual employees and organizations as whole. Some of these factors like, Skill sets and motivation play the most basic and hence important role in making an organization productive and performing.
He further explained that competencies are required to manage skill sets, to motivate people and to provide them organisational support. Though technical skills are required at the lower level in an organisation, one must have managerial skills, functional skills as well as conceptual skills as one move ahead in an organisation.
Mr Jayant Kumar, Chief Business HR, Tata power highlighted that high performance work is very contextual, every organisation has different need and creating high performance organisation is everyday thing. He also mentioned that, now, every member of the organisation has different need and for that reason HR need to take care of it and that too at different levels. Moreover he highlighted that three things which need to be addressed are Autonomy, Mastery &Purpose.
Gracing the closing ceremony, Shri DJ Pandian, Principal Secretary, Energy and Petrochemicals Department, Government of Gujarat, spoke at length on all the issues and challenges grappling the power sector in Gujarat state and country. He also addressed what all steps the State government has taken to satisfy the needs of Domestic consumers, Famers and Industrial Consumers etc. He also stressed that India needs to do much to reignite the Exploration and Production sector along with the need of the country to invest into productive Oil, gas and Coal assets abroad. He mentioned that, Solar is the future and has a very long way to go into various other applications as well. He also stressed that the surplus capacity in the state could be used to support deficit states as well.
The event was sponsored by Gujarat Power Corporation Limited. Business India & CII-YI was the Media Partner & Knowledge partner for this event, respectively. SPM’s3rd Power Sector India Roundtable was highly appreciated by all the students, speakers, Industry listeners and media listeners and people from academia. Other knowledge initiatives taken by SPM are Oil & Gas Conclave, Infrastructure Conclave & Financial Services Roundtable which shall be organised in the month of Sepember-October’2013.
