Vijayawada: There will be no tariff hike for consumers of any category in the state other than the railways, the Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission has announced.
The commission approved the new power tariff for the financial year from April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025 in AP. The announcement on Monday, on election-eve, is seen as a major relief to power consumers.
APERC chairman Justice CV Nagarjuna Reddy stated that the commission carried out the revision as per norms after taking the opinions, objections and suggestions from the general public.
The annual revenue requirement was proposed by Discoms including SPDCL, CPDCL and EFPDL at Rs 56,573.03 crore while it was approved by APERC at Rs 56,501.81 crore. Similarly, against the proposed revenue gap filed by Discoms at Rs 13,624.67 crore, the APERC fixed it at Rs 15,299.18 crore.
Moreover, the state government would be providing subsidy support after adjustments of true up/down of previous years, to an extent of Rs 13,589.18 crore. This subsidy was over Rs 3,453.96 crore compared to the last year’s subsidy of Rs 10,135.22 crore.
The state government provided subsidy support to various classes of consumers through DBT mode, directly to power utilities, to an extent of Rs 1,529.34 crore in total.
The APERC chairman stated that there was no tariff hike to any category except for the Railways. “The state government had been extremely cooperative in bearing the entire subsidy burden of Rs 13,589.18 crore, compared to last year’s subsidy of Rs 10,135.22 crore. “This helped avoid the need for increasing the tariffs on consumers to cover the revenue shortfall.”
This would help alleviate any further financial burden on the consumers, the chairman stressed.
Meanwhile, the energy charges per unit have increased from Rs 5.50 to Rs 6.50 per unit for the railways. “This hike reflects the actual cost of service and inflation since there has been no hike in tariffs for the railways from 2020-21.”
Some relief has been provided to the sago mills and poultry plants. The sago mills have been included in the season’s industries category while the poultries are allowed an exemption of five per cent of their total consumption under the same category of billing, to meet their office and staff quarter consumption.
The APTE’s order said the grid support charges are limited to only co-located captive power plants. The green tariff has been fixed at 0.75 premium over the applicable category’s tariff to facilitate the direct procurement of green energy from Discoms by any consumer.
The tariff for EVs remained at Rs 6.70 per unit without demand charges for promotion of their penetration even though Discoms proposed to increase it to the cost-of-service level.
The APERC has directed the Discoms to make available the feeder-wise agricultural sales under the free power category on their websites, rectifying all the defects, and also asked to follow the SPOs issued by the Union power ministry and the GoI in estimating the sales for agricultura consumers, raising subsidy and accounting and of raising the interest on subsidy if the payment gets delayed from the government.
The commission requested the AP government to honour SoPs issued by the Centre.
