Review Planning & Monitoring (RPM) meeting held with States and State Power Utilities

The Review Planning & Monitoring (RPM) meeting with States and State Power Utilities was held recently at New Delhi, under the chairmanship of Union Minister of Power and New & Renewable Energy R K Singh in presence of Minister of State for Power and Heavy Industries Krishan Pal Gurjar.

Secretary (Power), Secretary (New & Renewable Energy) along with other senior officials from Ministry of Power, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy, Power Sector CPSEs and Power / Energy Departments of various States and State Power Utilities were present in the meeting.

The meeting deliberated on several issues of national importance in the power sector with underpinnings of sectoral viability and sustainability, building upon Prime Minister’s address on the occasion of Ujjwal Bharat Ujjwal Bhavishya celebrations.

These included liquidation of government department electricity dues and subsidy dues; progress on prepaid Smart metering in Government departments; establishing robust systems of energy accounting and subsidy accounting and timely and advance payments thereof; timely fixation of regular and true-up tariffs; timely finalisation of Utility accounts; progress of feeder & DT metering; progress on Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS); and compliance in regard to electricity (Late Payment Surcharge and Related Matters) Rules, 2022.

During the meeting, Union Minister launched the tenth integrated rating of power distribution utilities, first consumer service rating of DISCOMs and Bharat eSmart Mobile Application (BeSMA).

Integrated Rating exercise is being carried out annually since 2012 with the aim of evaluating performance of utilities on a range of parameters covering financial sustainability, performance excellence and external environment and their ability to sustain improvements year over year.

The methodology for the rating has been comprehensively reviewed and revised in the current rating exercise, which is the tenth one in the series. The rating now lays a higher emphasis on financial performance, while also assessing operational efficiencies and external ecosystem of DISCOMs. The rating will now be dynamic in nature based on triggers having impact on DISCOM financials. Private DISCOMs and State Power Departments have also been included for comprehensive sectoral coverage.

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