VIJAYAWADA: In a relief to consumers, the Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (APERC) has decided not to hike tariff for any category except railways. APERC Chairman Justice CV Nagarjuna Reddy on Monday released the Retail Supply Tariff Order for the financial year 2024-25.
Elaborating on the order, Justice Reddy said the revenue gap logged by the power distribution companies (discoms) without considering the DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) was Rs 13,624.67 crore.
He pointed out that for the first time the State government has come forward to fill revenue gap in the form of subsidy, resulting in the commission not having to hike tariff. After adjustments of true up/down of previous years, the subsidy support provided by the State government for the financial year 2024-25 will be 13,589.18 crore, while the subsidy for the last fiscal was Rs 10,135.22 crore.
He explained that energy charges per unit for railways have been increased to Rs 6.50 from Rs 5.50 so as to reflect the actual cost of service and inflation since there has been no hike in tariffs for railways from the financial year 2020-21.
Discoms filed Aggregate Revenue Requirement (ARR) for the financial year 2024-25 at Rs 56,573.03 crore, while APERC had pegged it as Rs 56,501.81 crore.
Additionally, the Commission has included Sago mills in the seasonal category and allowed poultries 5% of their total consumption under the same category of billing to meet their office and staff quarters consumption, which is incidental to their activities.
“This will relieve the poultry units from being booked by DPE and Vigilance under malpractice. The Grid Support Charges were limited to only co-located captive power plants as per the orders of Appellate Tribunal For Electricity (APTEL) issued on December 14, 2023,” the APERC chief noted.
Further, it fixed premium for green tariff at Rs 0.75 as against the proposal of discoms to fix it at Rs 1. By paying Rs 0.75 extra over the applicable tariff to them, any consumer can meet their RPO/RCO obligations from the green energy procured from the discoms.
The tariff for EVs was retained at Rs 6.70 per unit without demand charges for the promotion of their penetration even though discoms proposed to increase it to the cost of service level. Proposal of discoms to create a separate sub-category in HT III(c) - energy intensive industries for the solar PV module manufacturing industry allocated under PLI was also not accepted.