The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has issued the “Guidelines for Benchmarking of Operation & Maintenance Norms for Distribution Utilities”.
The guidelines have been developed to standardise operation and maintenance (O&M) norms across the sector. The guidelines include O&M benchmarking for major equipment in 33/11 kV substations, covering key equipment identification and maintenance practices for power transformers. Additionally, they recommend treating total expenditure/ operational expenditure as a separate head under annual revenue requirement calculations, with reimbursement based on actual expenditure after prudence checks by the concerned regulatory commission. A hybrid approach for determining O&M expenses has also been proposed.