through a high-voltage line. A greater share of losses therefore occurs over the distribution network, maintained at a lower-voltage (at 11kV), compared to transmission lines (for example, at 142kV).

To calculate transmission losses, a data set from Rajasthan’s state transmission company containing the total energy generated and total transmission losses for each day between May 2016 to March 2018 is used. Following McRae and Wolak (2019), this information is used to first fit a quadratic relationship between input energy and energy losses, as follows: T u 0 1 2 )2 dd dd where, is the energy inserted into the transmission network and ii = ββ + ββ QQii + ββ (QQii + εεT uii are technical losses at time . We differentiate the above equation to calculate marginal transmission loss, dd T u 1 2 ∗ ii ii QQ TT TT ∑ , where ∑ is the electricity dispatched by all generators at 15-minute intervals ( ). ii = ββ + 2 ββ nn ii nn ii Data on generator-wise energy dispatched at 15-minute time intervals ( ) comes from Rajasthan’s ii=1 RR,ii ii=1 RR,ii QQ QQ TT SLDC. Although this high-frequency data set captures the impact of peak load on technical losses, the ii RR,ii QQ data set suffers from three limitations, for which we make certain assumptions and adjustments. First, the data is available only for the calendar year 2018. We use this data under the assumption that the distribution of marginal transmission losses at 15-minute intervals in financial year 2016-17 is not different from calendar year 2018. Second, the SLDC data set provides electricity dispatch information for the entire state of Rajasthan. The state of Rajasthan is serviced by three utility companies, only one of which is JVVNL. The latter serves approximately 40 percent<sup>23</sup> of the total state-level demand. We rescale the state-wide dispatch figures by 40% to estimate JVVNL’s share of dispatch at 15-minute intervals. Finally, this data set contains dispatch information from state owned generator units only. State-owned generators serve 57.1 percent of JVVNL’s annual demand. The residual portion of the demand is met through a portfolio of centrally-owned generators, renewable sources and captive power plants. Real-time dispatch information from these other generation sources are unavailable. As a result, the total dispatch in the SLDC data are scaled by a factor of 1.7513 (=100/57.1) to estimate energy dispatched across all generation units at 15-minute intervals. Based on these adjustments, the marginal transmission level losses are estimated to be 5.2% with a standard deviation of 1%. • **Distribution losses** The total energy entering the distribution network ( ) is calculated as the difference between energy dispatched by all generators (∑ ) and the marginal transmission losses at 15-minute DD ii intervals (T u ): = ∑ −T nnii=1u RR,iiii. Marginal losses in the distribution network can be QQ QQ calculated by first estimating the quadratic relationship between losses and input energy, and then TT DD nn ii TT ii ii ii=1 RR,ii ii calculating the marginal distribution losses as QQ QQ T u 1 2 . DD DD A cross-sectional data set on feeder level losses is used to estimate the quadratic relationship ii ii = ββ + 2 ββ ∗QQ between energy entering the distribution network and network level losses. This data was collected under an audit conducted by the World Bank’s Energy Practice as part of a lending program in Rajasthan. The data set contains information on total losses for the period April to December 2017

> 23 Source:

> http://www.pfcindia.com/DocumentRepository/ckfinder/files/Operations/Performance_Reports_of_State_Power_Utilities/1_Repo rt%20on%20the%20Performance%20of%20State%20Power%20Utilities%202013-14%20to%202015-16.pdf (page 126). 19