Power min pushes for financial support from Central Electricity Authority
By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, July 5: Power Minister AT Mondal made a strong pitch for the release of the frozen Power System Development Fund (PSDF) allocations on Saturday.
He said the fund, withheld despite the approval of the ‘Transmission System Requirement of NER States & Sikkim up to 2031-32’ by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), has delayed critical upgrades across the Northeast.
Mondal made the appeal during the 16th National Power Committee (NPC) meeting held in Shillong on July 4 under the aegis of the North Eastern Regional Power Committee (NERPC), of which he is the Chairman.
The minister urged the Chairman of the NPC and CEA to expedite the disbursement, underlining that the Northeast urgently needs financial support for ongoing and upcoming transmission projects.
He informed the gathering that Meghalaya has, over the past five years, added 434 circuit kilometres to its 220kV and 132kV transmission lines and increased transformation capacity by 1,130 MVA.
The upcoming projects are expected to add 1,090 circuit km of lines and 760 MVA of capacity, requiring Rs 2,270 crore in funding.
Mondal also called for dedicated 132/33 kV substations to be installed in the international border areas, such as Baghmara, to improve connectivity in remote and strategic locations.
The NPC meeting, hosted at an upscale hotel in Shillong, saw several key national-level decisions on power sector reforms.
These included the shift from SDH to MPLS communication technology in ISTS systems, finalisation of bidder criteria for third-party substation audits, adoption of a uniform accounting software for RPCs and the NPC, enforcement of technical minimum scheduling for thermal ISGS and state generators, and the installation of firewalls at ISTS substations.
The meeting was attended by senior power officials, including CEA Chairperson Ghanshyam Prasad and 33 delegates from across the country.
Earlier in the day, Mondal and Prasad inaugurated the new NERPC office building in Shillong, where he recalled his role in resolving legal bottlenecks during its construction.