After a wait of almost a year, the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) has finally issued the order to make Nagpur and Twitter Facebook Share Email Print Save Comment Amravati load shedding free. The city had first got assurance of zero load shedding from former minister of state for power Sunil Deshmukh on December 26, 2008. However, since then it has been a long-drawn fight.
Ironically, Deshmukh today is a man out of power having lost in the recent state assembly elections to Rajendra Shekhawat from Amravati constituency.
Now comes the rider: The zero load shedding (ZLS) order will benefit only the areas coming under Congress Nagar, Mahal, Gandhibagh and Civil Lines divisions, which roughly means areas under municipal limits. Areas like Besa, Wadi and Godhni do not stand to benefit from this order. MIDC in Hingna will continue to face 16 hour power cuts on Wednesdays.
The MERC on Monday stated that the MSEDCL should implement the order from December 1 to November 30, 2010. The Commission has ordered the MSEDCL to arrange for power for this period so that there are no hitches in the implementation of this scheme.
However, there are doubts if the MSEDCL would be able to implement the order from Tuesday as it would take time to arrange for the purchase of additional power. A senior MSEDCL official said that it would take at least a week to arrange for the extra power and prepare the billing software.
Reacting to the order, RB Goenka of Vidarbha Industries Association, said, "It's a welcome development. But the Commission should have considered VIA's contention that tariff had increased by 20% instead of 4.2% as claimed by MSEDCL. We would soon file a review petition in this regard. We are also disappointed that the MERC did not agree to our demand of waiving of transmission losses for Nagpur and Amravati."
BJP's Devendra Fadnavis, the South-West Nagpur MLA, who has been championing the ZLS cause for Nagpur said, "Until I go through the detailed order, I would not like to comment."
Full power is coming at a price for Nagpurians. The surcharge for the city has been calculated at 51 paise per unit. This could however go up in the summer months as currently the surcharge has been calculated considering load shedding to be on the lower side. MERC has also stated that MSEDCL should purchase extra power for meeting the extra demand, which will again translate into higher surcharge.
Another important aspect of the order is that MERC has not imposed any cap on power purchase rates, which was the case with earlier ZLS orders for Pune and other cities. This would enable MSEDCL to continue ZLS even when power rates go up.
In its petition the MSEDCL had proposed a surcharge of 40 paise per unit. However, the MERC has pegged it at 51 paise due to two reasons. Firstly, the MSEDCL had proposed that it would not purchase any power during July-September. However, in view of heavy load shedding during these months in 2008 and 2009 due to break in monsoons, MERC has asked the distribution company to purchase power throughout the 12 months. Secondly, the MERC has shot down the VIA's proposal to pay 25 paise per unit for maintenance work on Wednesday as impracticable.
The MSEDCL will have to look outside the state for purchasing power as the plants in Maharashtra are not able to generate enough to meet the demands. The likely places from where power can be bought are the power exchanges - Indian Electricity Exchange and Power Exchange of India Ltd, power traders like Tata and Reliance, and private producers like JSW Energy in Chhatisagarh and Jindal in Jharkhand.
The MERC has calculated that MSEDCL would have to buy 53.8 MW power for 12 hours per day to make the city load shedding-free. This translates into 0.52 million units (MU) per day. The distribution losses for the city have been taken at 22%.
The commission has also cleared the proposal for Pune, Thane, Navi Mumbai and Aurangabad. However, ZLS has not been implement in Nashik as a majority of consumers opposed the proposal. The surcharge for Pune, Navi Mumbai and Thane is quite low due to lower distribution losses and the fact that industries too are paying it.
MSEDCL has been ordered to do quarterly accounting of power purchase expenditure and recovery by way of surcharge. If excess amount has been collected then MSEDCL would refund the amount in the next quarter and if the collection falls short then it would be recovered from consumers.
Five category of consumers have been spared from the ZLS surcharge - high tension industries and public water works on express feeders, railway traction, consumers whose monthly consumption is less than 30 units and agricultural consumers.