After hike, TPC offers lowest power tariff in city

Mumbai: Tata Power Company on Wednesday announced its proposed tariff for 2015-16. Consumers, to their relief, found it the lowest among suppliers in Mumbai and Maharashtra. The proposed hike is in the range of 4% to 9% compared to Reliance Energy’s 9% to 28% for the suburbs.
Power experts have not ruled out the possibility of mass migration of Reliance Energy as well as BEST consumers to TPC.
According to the proposed TPC tariff, if you pay Rs 289 for 100 units of power, you may have to pay Rs 302 — a 4% hike — in future.The tariff is subject to approval from the MERC.
Similarly, for consumption of 300 units of electricity, the bill could rise from Rs 1,150 at present to Rs 1,249 (a 9% hike) in the near future.
Power expert Ashok Pendse said, “There could be a possible migration of both low- and high-end residential consumers. One should also wait and watch to see if commercial users, like shopkeepers and traders, prefer TPC over Reliance Energy. However, for those who change over to TPC, there are additional costs involved, including wheeling charges, regulatory asset charges and, most importantly, the cross-subsidy surcharge.”
The proposed tariff indicated that there was a hike of 23-31% in TPC’s cross-subsidy surcharge for 2015-16 compared with what was being charged in the current fiscal year. “The tariff proposed by TPC still seems to be competitive,” said another expert.
The Reliance Energy tariff petition before MERC quotes 30-96% more tariff than that proposed by TPC. A Reliance official, though, clarified that the wheeling charges will go up due to “past recovery” and the proposed tariff was only applicable for one year.
For high-end power consumers, who use 300-500 units every months, TPC has proposed just Rs 7.56 per unit compared with Reliance’s Rs 11.27. In the top segment (500 and above units), the rates of TPC was still lower than Rs 10 per unit (quoted at Rs 9.40 per unit) as compared to Rs 13.97 per unit of Reliance Energy.
The industry consumers may also gain from a competitive tariff of Rs 8.30 per unit while those in the commercial segment have a proposed tariff of Rs 8.60.
Sources in the energy department said MERC had introduced competition in the Mumbai distribution area and consumers were now able to choose the service provider of their own choice by duly weighing the tariffs and service levels offered by the distribution utilities.