Ahead of filing retail supply tariff (RST) proposals before the Telangana State Electricity Regulatory Commission (TSERC), the power utilities in the State, which have already sought clearance from the government for increasing the tariff that remained unchanged for the last four years, appear to be preparing ground by building up mood.
Minister for Finance T. Harish Rao and Minister for Energy G. Jagadish Reddy held discussions with senior executives of the four power utilities including Special Chief Secretary (Energy) Sunil Sharma for the second day on Tuesday. The focus was on the increasing burden forced upon by the Centre in the name of green/clean energy cess, coal prices, coal transport charges, renewable energy purchase obligation and exposure to burden in the form of some power purchase agreements such as Krishnapatnam during the discussions held on Tuesday.
The meeting was of the view that the increase of clean energy cess from ₹50 per tonne to ₹400 per tonne of coal had alone burdened the power utilities by ₹7,200 crore during that last seven years. Further, increase in coal prices by 6% to 10% every year was also burdening the two power distribution companies (Discoms) by about ₹725 crore every year. In addition, increase in the coal transportation charges had also added to the burden of Discoms as the transport charges had gone up by 40% during the last seven years. When the Discoms were struggling to plug the losses due to such charges, the compulsion of renewable power purchase obligation (RPPO) was also showing a telling impact on the plant load factor of the generating stations of the Telangana State Power Generation Corporation (TSGenco).
The meeting has also put on record that the Discoms had to bear an additional burden of ₹2,763 crore for purchasing energy in the open market following scrapping of PPAs of Krishnapatnam by Andhra Pradesh and taking over Lower Sileru denying low-cost energy to Telangana immediately after bifurcation of AP. Stoppage of energy supply from other AP generation stations had also burdened Telangana Discoms by another ₹2,502 crore. The Telangana Discoms had ₹12,185 crore as on the date of formation of State and Telangana losses and in addition the State government was providing a subsidy of ₹18,167 per every agriculture pump-set connection every year with uninterrupted power supply and the connections had gone from 19.03 lake to 25.92 lake with a spending of ₹3,375 crore on the 6.89 lake new connections. It was spending another ₹3,200 crore on lift irrigation schemes.
Subsidies given to all domestic consumers with consumption up to 200 units a month, free power given to SC, ST consumers with consumption up to 100 units, to hair saloons, dhobi ghats and laundry shops with consumption up to 250 units and subsidy of ₹2 per unit given to power looms, poultry units and spinning mills was also being given. Collection of energy charges of ₹4,374 crore was also affected due to the COVID-19 impact causing more burden on Discoms.
