Tata stops power supply to Reliance

Tata Power Company (TPC) stopped supplying 200 mega watts of power to suburban distributor Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (RInfra) from Friday. Dharmendra Jore reports.

Tata Power Company (TPC) stopped supplying 200 mega watts of power to suburban distributor Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (RInfra) from Friday.

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But the 28 lakh consumers will get uninterrupted electricity. RInfra claimed the deficit would not impact the power bills because they have arranged for inexpensive supply to mitigate the gap.

The TPC’s one lakh consumers may have a reason to rejoice as the extra power might reduce their burden.

“We will use the supply for our own consumers,” said TPC in a statement on Friday. Last year, the company had to buy expensive power to mange its demand side. TPC got permission to cater to retail consumers a couple of years ago. This directive started a war between the two because high-end consumers shifted to TPC’s cheap supply.

TPC formally ended the 82-year-old arrangement with suburban supplier (the name and ownership of company changed over the years).

The company that has licence to supply the entire city withdrew the supply gradually because of government intervention over the last one year. Till Thursday, TPC supplied 200 mega watts to RInfra, which would get more than 700 MW till early last year.

A senior RInfra official said the utility would not need to buy expensive power this summer (or in future) because several consumers (about one lakh) had shifted to TPC from RInfra. He said that the company has submitted its plan of buying extra power at affordable rates to the state regulator.