In a major hike in power tariff, the Bihar Electricity Regulatory Commission (BERC) Thursday approved an increase by 24.10% across all categories of consumers, and also doubled the fixed charge, which is the minimum monthly per kilo-watt (kW) charge a consumer pays in addition to the actual energy consumption, from the next financial year (2023-24), said officials familiar with the development.
The net hike in power tariff will, however, be known only after the state government announces its subsidy, which is likely next month.
The new tariff will come into effect from April 1, and continue till March 31 next year, or till the next tariff order, said BERC chairman Shishir Sinha, as he read out the order of the two-bench commission, which included Subhash Chandra Chaurasia as its member.
The commission also agreed to reduce the tariff slabs from three to two for domestic and non-domestic consumers.
The reduction in tariff slab will also pinch the consumers, as they will now have to pay the highest per unit cost of energy for a particular category, after the initial consumption of 50 units in case of rural consumers, and 100 units for urban consumers.
For instance, after the merger of the second slab, urban domestic consumers (DS II) will have to pay between ₹1.05 and ₹2.15 per unit more, as compared to the prevailing rate.
The commission had revised the new per unit rate to ₹7.57 as against an existing ₹6.10 for the first 100 units of energy consumption. For the next tariff slab of 101 units and above, the revised rate is ₹9.10 as against an existing ₹6.95 for consumption between 101 and 200 units, and ₹8.05 for monthly consumption beyond 200 units.
Rural domestic consumers will pay at the revised per unit rate of ₹7.57 for the first 50 units against an existing ₹6.10, an increase of ₹1.47. For the next tariff slab beyond 51 units, consumers will now pay ₹8.11 per unit as against existing ₹6.40 for consumption between 51 and 100 units, and ₹6.70 for monthly consumption above 100 units.
Non-domestic urban consumers, with contract demand above 0.5kW upto 70kW, will now pay at revised per unit rate of ₹7.88 for the first 100 units against an existing ₹6.35. For the next tariff slab above 100 units, they will now pay ₹9.08 per unit against an existing ₹6.85 for 101-200 units and ₹7.40 for monthly consumption beyond 200 units.
For non-domestic rural consumers, the revised per unit rate was ₹7.94 for the first 100 units and ₹8.36 for above 100 units, as against an existing rate of ₹6.40 for first 100 units, ₹7.00 for 101-200 units and ₹7.55 for monthly consumption above 200 units.
In a nominal relief to rural consumers, the commission agreed to offer 1% rebate of total monthly energy bill of last quarter to post-paid rural consumers, making offline payment of their bills regularly.
“The two discoms – the South and the North Bihar Power Distribution Companies Ltd. — had proposed a cumulative increase of 53.62% in power tariff for 2023-24, but we agreed to increase it by 24.10% only,” said Sinha.
“The average per unit power purchase cost from Central sectors that was ₹4.9 for discoms has gone up to ₹5.82 in the last one year due to increase in fuel prices. In addition, the transmission cost levied by Central transmission utilities has gone up by more than 80% during this period,” said Sinha, defending the hike in power tariff.
The state government had given a subsidy of around ₹8,000 crore last year, he added.
The government’s per unit subsidy to consumers was ₹3.50 for BPL families, ₹3.50 for rural domestic consumers (DS I), ₹1.83 for urban domestic consumers (DS II), ₹2.92 for non-domestic rural (NDS I) and ₹0.53 for non-domestic urban consumers (NDS II).
“The average effective hike in tariff for urban domestic consumers was around 30% without subsidy, given the increase in fixed and energy charges, decrease in tariff slab from three to two, and an electricity duty of 6%,” said Nand Sharma, an independent power tariff analyst and a former tariff consultant of the BERC. He said the hike was due to increase in power purchase cost from NTPC.
The Bihar Industries Association (BIA) expressed serious concern at the hike in power tariff.
“The government should increase the subsidy component to lessen the impact of the hike on the common man. It should also consider to extend subsidy to industries in order to promote them. Besides, the government should also ask discoms to tone up their aggregate transmission and commercial (AT&C) loss, which was around 30% at present, against 15% fixed by the regulator against the claim of 20.12% for NBPDCL and 22.06% for SBPDCL for 2023-24,” said Basudeo Prasad, chairman of the BIA energy committee.
The last major hike in power tariff was 50%, excluding the subsidy component, in 2017. There was no revision in tariff last year despite the discoms proposing a hike by 9.90% for financial year 2022-23.
Prior to that, the commission had approved an average cumulative hike in power tariff by 0.63%, which effectively translated into 5 paise to 35 paise per unit hike for domestic urban consumers for the financial year 2021-22.
