Power tariff hike in the offing to plug losses

Your electricity bills are expected to rise further. Power distribution companies of Haryana have decided to recover the pending fuel surcharge adjustment (FSA) from consumers in the next three years. Sanjeev K Ahuja reports.

Your electricity bills are expected to rise further. Power distribution companies of Haryana have decided to recover the pending fuel surcharge adjustment (FSA) from consumers in the next three years.

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The discoms have planned to pass on the burden to consumers to cope up with their collective revenue loss of around Rs 19,000 crore during the past few years.

The discoms said the loss was incurred due to difference between electricity generation cost and charges collected from the users.

FSA is the gap between the cost of power purchase and money earned from sale. The additional expenditure is levied on consumers in addition to basic tariff, fixed charges, electricity duty, meter charges etc. The discoms will recover pending FSA from the end users. This would lead to a tariff hike of up to Rs 1.50 per unit in the next three years.

According to the discoms, against R7 per unit of power distribution cost, the revenue realisation is Rs 4.5 only and this gap has led to thousands of crores loss over the last several years. Against 300% hike in the cost of power procurement between 2001 and 2012, the rate of tariff hike during this period was not more than 50-60% due to resistance from the regulatory authority.

Now engineers and workers of discoms have been given the responsibility to reduce the cost of supply by 60 paise per unit by reducing the rate of aggregate losses from the present 30% to 15% during next three years," said Devender Singh, chairman and managing director, Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) and Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (UHBVN).

Singh said the FSA should not be mistaken as tariff hike. "We plan to make the discoms loss-free entities in next three years when we would be able to supply 24-hour cut-free power."

The electricity consumers in Haryana have witnessed three tariff hikes since April 1 this year in the name of FSA recovery. The last hike came on September 22.