An incentive granted by the Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission (KSERC) to 77 high-tension and extra-high-tension consumers, allegedly in violation of norms, for maintaining the power factor consistency has triggered a row. This, coupled with the flawed assessment of cross-subsidy charges levied from such consumers, is understood to have entailed a loss of ₹120 crore to the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) the past one year.
Fare revision
Power Department sources told The Hindu that the resource-strained board had no option but to shift the burden to its 94-lakh domestic consumers. This component is likely to be factored in while the power tariff is revised. The revised fair is likely to be announced within a week.
Power factor is a value fixed for containing energy loss and maintaining system stability for consumers. It ranges from 1 to 0.1. While the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission has fixed the power factor value at 0.95, the State has fixed it at 0.9. Consumers were eligible for a 0.25% incentive for increasing the power factor by 0.01 from the desired value of 0.9, sources said.
The KSERC is reported to have increased the incentive from 0.25% to 0.5% to a select group of extra-high-tension and high-tension consumers who incur a power bill of about ₹50 lakh and above. Though the hike appeared seemingly negligible, the board had incurred a loss of ₹90 crore on this score alone, sources said.
Open access surcharge
Similarly, the open access surcharge levied from large consumers is used to cushion the loss sustained while providing subsidised power to domestic consumers. Undue benefit provided by the commission to 26 large consumers through a flawed assessment of the surcharge had led to a loss of ₹30 crore during the past one year.
The board would be forced to transfer the loss to the domestic consumers who form a lion’s share of its clientele and this would influence all power tariff revisions in future, sources said.
Central move
The Centre has already mooted a proposal to do away with cross subsidy in phases and a majority of the large consumers of the board are seeking open access. None of the KSERC members were available for comments.
