Islamabad:Shah Jahan Mirza, former Managing Director, Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB) has described Competitive Trading Bilateral Contracts Market (CTBCM) as one of the sector’s most important topics, currently operating within a limited competitive market.
Mirza was speaking at launch of Energy Regulatory Sandbox of Network for Clean Energy Transition on “Impacts of competitive auctions on DISCOs: Managing Consequences of market Liberalisation” organised here by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).
He noted that the quantum being auctioned was not large in volume and might, therefore, have a limited overall impact on the sector. He identified the two pillars of the transition as the privatisation of Discos and the establishment of a competitive market under CTBCM and commended the SDPI sandbox exercise as a valuable effort. Citing global experience, he said markets opened to competition generally saw improvements in electricity pricing, quality and quantity. He said the overarching goal should be to reduce the overall system cost, which could be managed through income from wheeling charges and standard cost recovery from migrating consumers, ensuring the rest of the system faced no adverse impact.
Muhammad Umer from SDPI said solar and Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) adoption had gained significant momentum and had been instrumental in the sector’s transition. He said privatisation and liberalisation of the market, including privatisation of Discos, along with wheeling reforms, should be the way forward for introducing competition. He proposed designating solar and BESS entities as virtual power plants, enabling them to sell electricity generated during the day to industrial consumers through the CTBCM. He cautioned that privatisation alone would not benefit consumers, industry and the masses unless innovation remained central to market liberalisation.
Muhammad Ayub, former CEO, KPK Transmission and Grid Company, said that the basic operational infrastructure required for the CTBCM including a functional SCADA system and real-time online data, remained unavailable at the Disco level even years after being initiated. He noted that despite roughly seven to eight years of working on these reforms, no significant efficiency gains had materialised, and argued that the same resources should instead be directed toward core Disco reforms.
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