The Rajasthan Electricity Regulatory Commission (RERC) has issued a methodology for sign change and additional charges for its violation under the Deviation Settlement Mechanism (DSM).

According to the commission, if there is a sustained deviation from the schedule in one direction (positive or negative) for 12 time blocks continuously, the entity (buyer or seller), will correct its position by making the sign of its deviation from schedule change or by remaining in the range of +/- 20 MW with reference to its schedule, at least once, latest by the 13th time block.

In such eventuality, the commission has said that each violation will attract an additional charge of 10% of the DSM charge payable or receivable for that time block, excluding the additional charge for the deviation. The payment of an additional charge for the failure to adhere to sign change requirement will not apply to a forced outage of state generating station (SGS) in case of collective transactions on power exchanges.

The RERC has ordered that this provision will be effective from August 19, 2019.

The Rajasthan commission had issued draft amendments to the 2017 regulations on deviation settlement mechanism for grid-connected power in January 2019. Later, in June 2019, the Rajasthan High Court quashed a petition filed by the Indian Wind Power Association (IWPA) which challenged the validity of the DSM regulations passed by the RERC and requested it to be scrapped.

In that petition, members of IWPA had pleaded that the DSM charges were high and that they were major sufferers due to unscheduled power cuts, refusal to offtake power by the state power distribution companies (DISCOMs) despite good generation during peak hours. The Rajasthan High Court reviewed the petition and found that the regulations were valid.

Recently, Mercom analyzed how harsh penalties for deviation settlement are adversely affecting solar and wind projects in the country.

Image Credit: JBSEPL