VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (APERC) has strongly felt the need to balance the interest of consumers and discoms and focus on a consumer-centric approach in the power sector, and improve the financial stability and operational efficiency of discoms for ensuring quality and reliable power supply 24x7 to consumers.
On the eve of the conclusion of public hearings and State Advisory Committee (SAC) meeting on ARR and tariff filings of the discoms for FY 2022-23 conducted virtually, APERC chairman Justice C V Nagarjuna Reddy, who took feedback fthe rom public, said that financially sound and healthy discoms can deliver better services to the consumers.
“Protecting consumers’ interests and strengthening power utilities are the two major objectives of the Commission. As power utilities in the State are facing a severe financial crisis, the APERC felt that it’s high time for the consumers and stakeholders to support the discoms to get reliable and quality power that would help in the rapid agricultural and industrial growth of the State and spur overall economic development,” he explained.
The APERC and power utilities should work in tandem for the development of the sector. The APERC would keep consumers’ interests in mind while making every decision, the chairman said.
According to APERC officials, the commission will regulate power procurement of the discoms to ensure transparency, accountability and optimise the power purchase cost.
The commission is also closely monitoring the investment proposals of the discoms keeping in view the reliability and quality of power supply to consumers and to optimise the network expenditure. It has introduced automatic compensation to certain service standard failures of the discoms to ensure improvement of the service to the consumers.
The Commission is periodically monitoring the standards of performance (SOP) and other service issues related to the consumers. Also, the APERC is working on a model to make farmers stakeholders in distributed solar power development.
The officials informed the APERC that in view of the overall economic benefit and environmental protection and in tune with the objective of the Government of India to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070, all stakeholders are required to keep in mind that “only option available for energy procurement by the discoms in future to meet their energy/demand shortages, is from renewable sources, particularly wind and solar....”
The electricity demand projected for agriculture and allied services (LT&HT) for FY23 is 19819 MU for around 19 lakh services. The officials of the power utilities said that sales projected by the discoms are 66,530 million units for FY23 where in around 38,199 MU (57%) of the demand is required towards domestic and industrial categories for around 1.52 crore consumers who constitute 79.8 per cent of the total 1.91 crore electricity consumers in the State.
Though APERC conducts public hearings on tariff proposals once in a year, any consumer/stakeholder in the State can express their views/suggestions/observations to secretary APERC any time in 365 days in the year with regard to improvement of the system.
FY-23 estimates