The Hindu Business Line : Kerala electricity board seeks to increase tariff

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov. 2 The Kerala State Electricity Board has informed the State electricity regulatory commission, KSERC, that given the precarious power availability situation, there is no other go but to further increase the power tariff.

At a public hearing held by the commission here on Saturday, the board said that the surcharge on tariff being currently levied from the consumers would not be enough to bridge its revenue deficit.

The board should be allowed to recover the cost of excess power purchased from outside through a surcharge in the current year, the representative of the board told the commission.

‘Poor’ storage levels

It was pointed out that the water storage at the board’s hydel reservoirs remained poor.

At the same time, there had not been any reduction in consumption despite power supply restrictions imposed recently.

The board submitted before the commission that the prevailing restrictions on power supply and the 50-paise thermal surcharge per unit would help it bridge only a part of the huge gap between revenue and expenses.

The net additional liability till the end of September this year was Rs 347.50 crore despite the restrictions and surcharge.

The board projected that it would have to buy an additional 10.72 million units of costly power from liquid fuel stations on a daily basis to maintain the supply during the rest of the year.

Additional expenditure

This would mean additional daily expenditure of Rs 8.2 crore, only part which could be recovered through the existing surcharge and supply restrictions.

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