How the ‘untouchable’ power sector turned a favourite of foreign & domestic investors

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Ashok Kumar Khurana, DG, Association of Power Producers, says “foreign investors have now shown great interest in the entire supply chain of power, that is, generation, conventional and renewable, transmission, distribution, all these sectors and recent block deals taking place through Abu Dhabi National Energy Company. They have shown big interest in Adani Transmission.

The Canadian Pension Fund is investing in Apraava Energy, JSW Energy, and GQG investment in Adani's power generation.”What is happening in the Indian power space in your view? With changes in policy making, the demand-supply environment, there is a lot of excitement in the market and many power-related corporates sound very energized. What is your take?With economic activity picking up, the power sector has seen a massive demand revival and we expect it to increase by another 8% to 9% annualised.

Earlier, the problem was that demand was sluggish and capacity was not being used. But now that demand has picked up, only yesterday, we supplied the peak 233 gigawatts in August which is the highest we have supplied till date.

This time, it is supposed to be a lean period for power, not the peak period and this revival in demand is basically the outcome of a series of reforms taken in the last five-seven years. Liquidation of areas, ensuring timely payments, fixation of cost-reflective tariffs, transparent subsidy mechanisms, disbursement and provisioning procedures, laying down quality standards of supply and provision of punishments /compensation, increasing regulatory oversight and accountability.

These are the power sector reforms which have been undertaken in the last five-six years. Along with this, coal production increased by 9.2% from last year to this