After the privatisation of power distribution, there has been both a slowdown in the consumption of power in the Capital and a sharp reduction in load-shedding. During 2002-03, energy consumption rose by 1,352 million units.
The next year, it grew by 699 million units and in 2004-05, it went up by an even lower 425 million units. This reflects how, even a limited reduction in power pilferage, can improve the situation.
More importantly, from the point of view of consumers, load-shedding levels have fallen to almost a third. According to data gathered by transmission company Transco, load-shedding rose from a mere 3 million units in 1986-87 to a whopping 558 million units in the year before privatisation, and fell to less than a third last year.
As a proportion of the energy supplied, load-shedding rose from 0.06 per cent in 1986-87 to 3 per cent in 2001-02. This fell to 0.84 per cent in 2004-05. What is true, however, is that this is an aggregate number and does not reflect the higher percentage of load-shedding in individual colonies.
The bulk of load-shedding, partly a factor of the relative size of the two distributions companies, continues in the areas under BSES and together, these accounted for around 60 per cent of the power-shedding in both 2003-04 and 2004-05.
In absolute terms, load-shedding in BSES areas fell from 135 million units in 2003-04 to 109 million units in 2004-05. For NDPL, load-shedding fell from 54 million units to 36 million units during the same period.
In the case of government-owned Transco, load-shedding fell from 39.8 million units to 30.7 million units. Transmission losses of the Transco have also fallen, from 3.84 per cent during 2002-03 to 1.69 per cent in 2003-04 and to 1.3 per cent in 2004-05.
In the case of Genco, the plant load factor has also risen, from 49.27 per cent in 2000-01 to 65.53 per cent in 2004-05, and to 67.14 per cent during the April-July period this year.
Other performance parameters also show significant improvements. While anywhere between a 14-20 per cent of distribution transformers used to fail in the pre-privatisation days, from 1998-99 to 2001-02, this came down to 1.26 per cent last year.
For BSES, the number of interruptions per feeder was down by around a fifth between 2003-04, and between 2004-05.
