Decentral energy and DISCOMs – can they co-exist?

The Indian Power Sector has recently achieved the distinguished feat of 100 percent household electrification. While this is a significant leap forward for the sector as a whole, ensuring cheap and reliable power 24X7 to all its consumers is a greater challenge they are facing. Despite significant progress in this regard, long power cuts are still the norm for select states and districts in India. In this backdrop, emerging technologies pertaining to distributed energy systems are gaining momentum across the country. While distributed systems such as rooftop solar have the potential to empower customers to move towards self-sufficiency, such systems are also perceived as a significant threat by DISCOMs.
While the global peers have indicated that this migration towards decentral systems is here to stay and it is for the conventional utilities to adapt to the new paradigm and thrive in the changing business environment. In particular, DISCOMs would need to move away from the conventional view of electricity as a “commodity” to the provision of energy as a “service”.