Union Minister of State for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy and Mines, Piyush Goyal has launched the ‘Merit Order Dispatch of Electricity for Rejuvenation of Income and Transparency (MERIT) app’ and the e-bidding portal for providing e-Bidding solution to States to select Independent Power Producers (IPPs), which would entail savings of nearly Rs 20,000 crore to consumers in the coming five years. Both the initiatives were taken for procurement of power by transferring their domestic coal under the scheme of flexibility in utilization of domestic coal.
The advantage of MERIT app included empowerment of the Consumer and participative governance, transparent information dissemination pertaining to marginal variable cost and source wise purchase of electricity and promotes economy and efficiency in operations. Besides, it would also help understand the utility portfolio and its complexity and optimization of the power procurement costs and would also facilitate renewable integration and handling of the variability and uncertainty of renewable.
Moreover, the app would also indicate about supply side reliability, adequacy, and co and the flexibility in utilization of domestic coal scheme envisages transferring coal to more efficient IPPs generating stations, leading to lower generation costs and ultimately lesser cost of electricity for the consumers. Besides, the e-Bidding portal, which has been designed to facilitate States in inviting bids for procurement of power from the prospective IPPs in transparent and fair manner. The successful bidder shall be selected through an e-reverse bid process.