VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (APERC) on Saturday stated that the public hearing on the annual revenue requirement (ARR) and retail supply tariff filings proposed for the financial year 2021-22 by the three state power distribution companies (Discoms) will be held for three days starting January 18, 2021.
Soliciting views/objections/suggestions from the public and the stakeholders, the commission said submissions could be made till 5.00 pm, December 28.
“In view of COVID-19 pandemic, the public hearings (through video conference) will be held in respect of all the three Discoms from January 18 to January 20... On each of these days the objections commonly against all Discoms’ filings or against the filing of any single Discom will be heard from the objectors,” the commission said in a statement. All the public hearings will be streamed live for the public.
It may be noted that the three Discoms have not proposed any tariff hike nor proposed any new categories despite their financial stress.
Meanwhile, the three Discoms, on December 17, submitted addendums to the proposed ARR and tariff filing.
They said that in view of COVID-19 and the pandemic imposed lockdown, the sales of APSPDCL and APEPDCL were expected to ‘drastically’ fall by 7.77 per cent and 12.13 per cent respectively, while the revenue fall is expected to be 10.88 per cent and 12.38 percent respectively in the 2020-21 financial year.
“Low sales quantum resulted in less power purchase cost than the approved power purchase cost. This is associated with the shortfall in revenue as well. In view of this, the licensee prays the commission not to consider this provisional true up in the ARR calculations for FY 2021-22,” the Discoms said.
In this context, the three Discoms, as per the commission’s direction, requested to permit them to file the true-up/true-down for financial year 2019-20 and FY2020-21 upon the completion of the audit.