Revamp KSEB's green energy wing, says IIM Kozhikode

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At a time when KSEB Limited is finding it difficult to meet its renewable energy targets, the second report of IIM-Kozhikode on 'Enhancing service quality and organisational effectiveness' has called for a thorough overhauling of KSEB's Renewable Energy wing. Finding that the "workload is less" in RE wing, the report has recommended the opening of a new consultancy wing for RE. The RE office deals with solar, energy savings and wind and innovation projects.

"In recent times, only limited numbers of new projects have come to KSEB. As projects are executed through EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contractors, workload is less in the Renewable Energy wing," the report stated. For example, there are only two energy auditing projects. Similarly, agricultural pumping related energy saving activities is progressing very slowly. As for wind projects, there is nothing much going on; there is just one tender and one expression of interest in the pipeline.

The IIM study was essentially recommending that KSEBL should concentrate on its core competency and leave the rest to private consultants. "There is increasing interest in various aspects of solar plant, from site survey to grid integration," the report stated. "As the strength of KSEBL is in transmission infrastructure design and grid integration and system studies and therefore many consultants are ready to associate as technical partners of KSEB," the report said. The consultancy division can take various roles such as that of owner engineers, advisory role, and also quality auditing of existing plants.

"KSEB, meanwhile, can focus on design to minimise cost without compromising on quality and grid integration and storage system design," the report said. The deliverables of the consultancy division would be mostly as survey reports, detailed project reports, design briefs and drawings. Quality assurance works may include quality procedure document preparation for factory and site acceptance and also witnessing of tests.