Customers to pay for Telangana discoms’ costly purchases

Hyderabad: Discoms are purchasing power at high rates to deal with the continuing power crisis.

This cost will eventually be passed on to consumers in the form of additional components in the tariff.

Discoms are scheduled to submit quarterly tariff proposals soon and this high cost of purchases will result in a significant tariff revision being sought.

The two discoms in Telangana State have spent more than Rs 100 crore in purchasing power from the power exchange in the last one month alone.

Overall, more than Rs 300 crore has been spent in expensive purchases.

The additional and previously un-estimated cost of these purchases will have to be recovered from the consumers.

Over the last two years, four tariff revisions have already taken place.

Meanwhile, Telangana is purchasing power from the exchange to meet the huge deficit at whatever available price.

As per information from Telangana discoms, power purchased from the exchange for October 21 stood at 1.43 million units at Rs 7.26 per unit, amounting to Rs 1.08 crore.

Power purchased from October 1 to October 21 stood at 147.37 mu at Rs 7.98 per unit, which has amounted to Rs 117.64 crore.

“Since the bifurcation, during critical deficit conditions, discoms are forced to purchase power at whatever rate available at the power exchange. Since such huge power shortages had not been anticipated at the time of division, the purchases that have to be made now are without prior planning. As there are directions to purchase whatever power is available, the focus is on purchasing as much power as possible. This will have a bearing on the traffic proposals,” said a highly placed source.

Although the exact extent of impact is not available, it is likely to be higher if the state continues to draw more power from the exchange.

The state government, meanwhile, is hopeful of getting an additional 500 MW from the Centre to overcome the energy crisis.