Why distribution is the hard part of the power sector
Indian electricity distribution serves close to 200 million consumers against a connected load of roughly 400 GW, through around 73 utilities: state electricity departments, private distribution companies, corporatised distribution companies and a small number of remaining state electricity boards. It is the link that touches the customer and collects the revenue that pays for everything upstream.
It is also the link that has had the least attention. Policy effort has gone into generation, on the reasoning that the deficit is a supply problem. A committee chaired by Deepak Parekh put the counter-argument more bluntly than most:
“India's power sector is a leaking bucket; the holes deliberately crafted and the leaks carefully collected as economic rents by various stakeholders that control the system. The logical thing to do would be to fix the bucket rather than to persistently emphasize shortages of power.”
What that means for contractors
Twenty years after reform began, the operational and financial weakness of distribution is what has opened the sector to outside participation: private franchising, public-private partnership, and a long queue of equipment and installation work. That is the part Leo Enterprises works in.
- 11 KV transformer installation and distribution as a registered TSSPDCL vendor
- HT and LT power cable laying and the associated infrastructure
- Work rated up to 33 KV, with formal 33 KV registration in process
None of that is glamorous work. It is measured on whether the supply is back on when the utility said it would be.