Half of Domestic Consumers Spared of Tariff Hike: APERC

Express News Service
Hyderabad: Despite a steep hike in domestic power charges, officials of the power utility claimed on Saturday that almost 50 per cent of domestic consumers were spared from tariff hike.
According to officials, there is no change in the power tariff for low-tension (LT) domestic consumers who consume 50 units or less in a month. The tariff for them remains the same at Rs 1.45 per unit. "It will benefit around 97.4 lakh consumers who are almost 50 per cent of the total consumers under domestic category," an official claimed after the APERC released the tariff order.
LT agricultural consumers will get seven- hour free supply which will benefit 30.7 lakh consumers.
The Aggregate Revenue Requirement for all four Discoms is Rs 40,639 crore. The total energy requirement approved by the APERC is 89,845 million units for 2013-14. The total sales approved by the ERC for the year is 77,410 million units.
The average cost of service (CoS) approved by APERC for 2013-14 is Rs 5.25 per units against Rs 4.44 per unit in 2012-13. This implies an increase of 18 per cent (81 paise per unit).   The Discoms will get a revenue of Rs 28,996 crore with the revised power tariff in the year.
The revenue increase in power tariff is Rs 6,173 crore, which is 21 per cent increase in total tariff compared to previous year.
To reduce the power cuts, an additional power availability of 2,430 million units in four peak months is expected from gas-based power plants with RLNG and another 8,841 million units from short-term sources during the peak months.

Average Hike per Unit
* Domestic consumers: Rs 0.58 
* HT consumers: Rs 1.12
* LT commercial: Rs 1.13
* LT industrial: Rs 0.63
* HT industrial: Rs 0.93