CERC notifies climate-friendly electricity grid norms

The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) on Friday notified changes to the Indian Electricity Grid Code to facilitate implementation of National Action Plan on Climate Change, which aims at significantly increasing the share of electricity generated from renewable sources.

Accordingly, any additional financial burden arising from fluctuations in the schedule in case of new solar energy plants and the fluctuations within ±30 per cent of schedule in case of new wind energy plants will be borne by all the users of inter-state grid.

These project developers and the host states will not be at disadvantage from such fluctuations. New wind energy generators will be able to fine-tune their schedules (based on forecasting) as close as three hours before actual generation.

The operational frequency band has been further tightened from '50.3 Hz to 49.2 Hz' to '50.2 to 49.5 Hz'. This, the power sector regulator said, is aimed at ensuring better performance of generating stations and user appliances such as railway traction motors and agricultural pump sets.

Generating stations supplying to more than one states will now be in domain of Regional Load Despatch Centres except where the host state has long term PPA of more than 50 per cent capacity under the revised guidelines. This, CERC said, would facilitate larger private investment in new generation capacities.

In addition to State Load Despatch Centres, all users of inter-state grid, including distribution utilities, will now be directly responsible for grid discipline and load management.  Utilities have been mandated to prepare and implement automatic load management schemes from next year.
 
CERC also made amendments to unscheduled interchange (UI) regulations in order to push more electricity to organised electricity markets and to further discourage use of UI mechanism for sale of electricity. Under this, underdrawls and over injections beyond the permissible quantities will be disincentivised and priced at lower rates. This would increase liquidity in organised electricity markets, CERC said.