Ease Of Doing Business: UP Govt Provides Online Facility To Industries For ‘Open Access Power’
Lucknow, December 18 (TNA) Following the directives of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to provide a conducive business environment and top-class facilities to industries in the Uttar Pradesh, the State government has initiated important steps to facilitate procurement of power by industrial units through short-term open access, thereby fulfilling a longstanding demand of industries, an official said on Thursday.
In this regard, Additional Chief Secretary, Energy, Arvind Kumar has informed that Uttar Pradesh Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. (UPPTCL) has uploaded the ‘standard operating procedure’ and integrated ‘online ABT portal’ on its official website online.upptcl.org/abt for for granting permission, inspection and installation consent for Availability Based Tariff (ABT) meters.
The ABT meters provide a flexible solution for energy monitoring and billing bulk inter utility power flows, particularly for power supply through open access.
Moreover, the customers, intending to avail short-term open access, can now obtain No-objection certificate (NoC) online through Uttar Pradesh State Load Dispatch Centre (UPSLDC) web portal www.eass.upsldc.org/eass/OAPreRegistration.jsp for ‘One-Time Registration’ on prescribed application format [FORMAT-ST11].
Minister, Industrial Development, Satish Mahana said that post-COVID-19 industries were facing pressure to reduce their operating costs and electricity entailed one of the major input costs, hence easing the process for obtaining open access would provide an affordable and optional source of power to the manufacturing units in particular.
Stressing on the commitment of the UP government to provide quality power supply to rapidly rising industrial investment in the State, Additional Chief Secretary, Infrastructure & Industrial Development, Alok Kumar said that acting on the long pending demand of industries for allowing and facilitating open access for power, the State government has taken steps to mitigate human interface by providing online facilities to register for open access as well as installation of ABT meters, a necessity for injection or drawl of electricity through open access.
“So far 63 short-term open access consumers have registered in the state, of which 58 are active registrations and consumers have already availed 224.42 Megawatt out of a total of 347.56 Megawatt power sanctioned under open access in U.P.”, he informed.
Kumar further said that open access was one of the strategic measures to create competitive and healthy industrial environment, whereby medium and large consumers have access to the transmission and distribution networks to obtain electricity from suppliers other than the local distribution company (discom).
According to U.P. Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC) regulations for open access, ‘Short-term open access’ means the right to use the intra-State transmission system and /or distribution system for a period of not exceeding 3 months at a time.
It may be noted that the registration of customer is aimed at recording basic inputs of open access transactions on the basis of which operational constraints in transmission and/or distribution system is assessed by the state load dispatch centre (SLDC) before permitting open access.