Urja Gyan

In a major tariff shock to residential consumers of Tata Power in the city, the state electricity regulatory commission on Friday approved a 25% increase in tariff for the year FY14.

Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) has approved an average increase in tariff to Rs5.26 from the existing Rs4.19 for FY14 for residential consumers, which will be effective from 1 July.

Tata Power is one of the three power distribution companies in Mumbai, the other two being BEST and Reliance Infra. All of them have to get their power tariffs approved from the regulatory commission.

The commission has approved the multi-year tariff plan till 2016 of Tata Power and allowed an increase of 25% for FY14, 15% for FY15 and 11% for FY16 for residential consumers. For FY15, the average tariff for residential consumers has been increased to Rs6.07 while for FY16, the commission has approved an increase in tariff to Rs6.74. Tata Power had proposed an increase of Rs6.44 for 2014-15 and Rs7.02 for FY16.

According to the new tariff plan for FY14, consumers in the below poverty line category will have to pay 10 paise per unit, while the tariff for 0-100 units has been fixed at 26 paise, 101-300 units at Rs1.85 and for those consuming above 500 units, the tariff has been fixed at Rs5.91. The wheeling charges for all the categories has been fixed at Rs1.87 per unit.

For FY15, the tariff will be revised to 41 paise for those consuming below 100 units, Rs2.05 for up to 300 units, Rs5.23 up to 500 units and Rs7.01 for those consuming above 500 units. The wheeling charges for all the consumer categories will be Rs2.08 per unit.

MERC has, for the year 2015-16, increased the tariff for BPL consumers to 47 paise. For those consuming below 100 units will have to pay 81 paise per unit, while the tariff for up to 300 units has been revised to Rs2.75, Rs6.38 for up to 500 units and Rs8.46 for above 500 units. The wheeling charges for the year has been fixed at 1.81 per unit.

The commission has also revised tariff for low tension commercial as well as high tension consumers for the period. The impact of cross subsidy surcharge for consumers migrating from Reliance Infra network to Tata Power is, however, not clear in the tariff order.