BENGALURU: Pay more for electricity with the state government on Wednesday announcing a 5.4% increase in power tariff effective Nov 1.
The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission has approved the tariff revision with average increase at 40 paise per unit. For instance, a domestic consumer in Bescom limits who uses about 200 units a month will pay around Rs 50 more now on. The fixed charges have not been revised.
KERC revises power tariff at the start of every financial year. This year, it didn’t affect a change owing to the adverse financial situation in all the sectors of the economy due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The revised tariff is applicable for the remaining five months of the ongoing financial year.
The energy commission said it plans to recoup the total revenue gap of Rs 2,473 crore (which was incurred because the tariff wasn’t revised on April 1) in the next three years. It is aiming to net Rs 1,030 crore in the next five months. Escoms had demanded a per-unit hike of Rs 1.3, but KERC agreed for 20-25 paise per unit.
The tariff increase was necessitated because the cost of power purchase has been rising every year due to procuring the same from new thermal and renewable energy sources. This year, the purchase of power cost increased by Rs 3,132 crore.
To encourage the use of clean energy, the commission has continued with the concessional tariff of Rs.5.2 per unit to BMRCL and Rs 6.5 per unit to the railways.
