The power secretary Pankaj Agarwal announced on Thursday that the draft of National Electricity Policy (NEP), 2026 has been sent to the Union Cabinet for an inter-ministerial discussion. The policy targets to achieve commercial viability and financial turnaround of the electricity sector and ensure availability of power with consistent and quality supply, while fulfilling peak demand and energy requirements.
"We have aggregated all the stakeholders comments. We have already moved the Cabinet note for the inter-ministerial consultation and I think it shouldn't be taking very long," ET reported quoting Power Secretary Pankaj Agarwal saying on the sidelines of 2nd Indian Power Sector Conference organised by industry body FICCI.
The new policy also aligns with Viksit Bharat vision 2047. The official stated that the previous NEP was notified in 2005 and then there were multiple challenges such as access to electricity and shortages etc and development of new sources of renewable energy was considered as a solution, but today the challenges are different.
"You can't expect it to be utilised 24X7 at a particular level. There will be more fluctuations, but given that fluctuation, if we can really use 60 per cent of grid capacity, I think that's a fairly good thing," he said. Furthermore, the power secretary mentioned that efforts are also underway to produce domestic smart meter chips to strengthen the value chain.
