The Ministry of Power released its ‘Draft Electricity (Promoting renewable energy through Green Energy Open Access) Rules 2021’ on 16th August, 2021 inviting comments and suggestions on the same. The draft rules include many provisions intended towards the development of open access RE. Some of these key provisions include reduction in the minimum limit of contracted demand to 100 kW, uniform Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) for DISCOMs, OA and Captive consumers, a central nodal agency with a centralised registry for all green OA consumers, no Additional Surcharge on green OA, etc. Although the objective of promoting green energy open access is welcome, many crucial concerns remain.

To truly develop efficient and competitive options for supply, a balanced and sustainable policy framework is needed that boosts investor confidence, protects consumer interests, enhances competition, and compensates utilities adequately for the risk they undertake and the services that they provide. The draft rules need to ensure clarity and certainty in processes, compensation at cost to utilities for services provided, and should provide flexibility and choice to consumers to meet their demand. Our comments focus on –

Need for harmonious changes across legal, policy and regulatory instruments: It is unclear whether the Central Govt rules are the right way to achieve changes as these matters are under the ambit of State ERCs under the Electricity Act, 2003. This risks a long, litigious process impeding decision making.

Extending applicability to all open access and captive, not just RE: Any enabling provision, including centralised registry, reduction of eligibility limit to 100 kW etc should not be restricted to RE alone, but extended to all forms of open access and captive, to provide flexibility and choice for consumers.

Size-based differentiation in processes: There should be separate treatment in regulations for consumers with connected load between 0.1 to 0.5 MW, 0.5 to 1 MW and those with load greater than 1 MW.

Replacement of CSS and AS with a single charge: We propose levy of a single surcharge (in place of CSS and AS) which is delinked from cross-subsidy and backing down, with a ceiling for Rs. 2.5/unit for a period of 5 years.

For more specific comments and detailed suggestions, please read our submission below.

The draft rules were also deliberated in a round table hosted by Prayas (Energy Group), details of which are available here.