CESC benchmarking against global utilities for better service

KOLKATA: The RP Sanjiv Goenka group's flagship company CESC Ltd was benchmarking itself against leading global utilities to improve its customer service as the utility expects the demand would jump to 3000 MW over the next decade.


"We are examining the best practises and facilities of the leading global utilities as we will transform the customer centric activities," the newly appointed CESC managing director Aniruddha Basu said here today.

He said the company would invest another Rs 1600-1700 crore over the next two years to upgrade and augment the distribution network and create infrastructure for the next decade by which "we hope the power demand will expand to 3000 MW from 1850 MW now", he said.

He said by Durga Puja this year, the utility would be able to introduce a host of web enabled services for customer convenience.

Speaking about its Haldia project, Basu said though the PPA between Haldia Energy and CESC had been signed, the tariff has not yet been fixed.

Haldia Energy is a subsidiary of CESC and the company was building 2x300 MW thermal power plant that would be ready for generation by next fiscal.

Once the Haldia unit is commissioned, CESC would scrap the old Cossipore power plant.

Later, 240 MW Titagarh power plant would also have to be phased out due to regulatory requirements, officials said.

Asked about de-growth of power demand during the Q1 period of the year, Basu said the demand from high consumption customers had declined by 15.5 per cent and that had led to overall marginal decline in demand.

"However, there had been growth in July, and for the fiscal there will be growth in power demand, but it will not be as high of the previous year," he said.