Assam households, industries stare at steep power tariff hike

The Assam Power Distribution Company Limits (APDCL) has petitioned the Assam Electricity Regulatory Commission (AERC) for an upward revision of retail tariff for 2022-23 to meet its requirement of Rs 8367.68 crore, which would hit hard the household consumers, who form 93% of the company’s consumer base.

According to the proposals, the tariff (combination of fixed and variable charges) will shoot up by a minimum of Rs 21.75 (which is for Jeevan Dhara category) for every kilo watt consumed per hour if the state government does not announce financial support like in the past.

The company has not proposed any changes in the tariff for three categories of consumers — electric vehicles charging stations, electric crematorium and railway traction.

The total tariff in a monthly bill is combination of fixed charges, which is per month per connection/ kW/kVA/HP and variable charges, which is per kilo watt per hour. There is a third component as meter rent, which has been kept unchanged.
The company has proposed that consumers with ‘DOMESTIC A’ connection pay Rs 6.75 per kwh as variable charge for the first 120 units per month, which will be an increase of Rs 1.85/kwh. It has also been proposed to raise the fixed charge component in this category to Rs 75 and both components together would be Rs 81.75 against the current amount of Rs 54.90 (subsidized).

Consumption between 120 and 240 units will attract variable charge of 7.90 in place of Rs 6.15 and consumption above 240 units will attract variable charge of Rs 8.40 in place of Rs 7.15.
Similarly, for consumers in ‘Domestic-B’, the variable charge is proposed to be increased to Rs 8.75 kwh from Rs 6.75 kwh, while the fixed charge is proposed to be raised to Rs 75.
The fixed charges have been drastically increased by 50% to 100% among the different categories of domestic consumers. Even for government schools, the fixed charges have been raised from Rs 70 to Rs 95 in the petition.

Among industrial consumers, the fixed charge has been raised by Rs 100 for the high tension industries with connection above 150 kVA category, which is the highest change proposed among all categories of consumers.
For variable charge component that depends on the extent of power consumption by any consumer, the highest increase of Rs 2.25/kwh has been proposed also for the option I high tension industries with connection above 150 kVA category consumers (variable charge will be higher for a temporary high tension consumer).