The Jharkhand State Electricity Board (JSEB), which is facing financial crisis, has decided to distribute power to various areas of the state on a selective basis–more power for places where revenue generation is satisfactory and less for areas where recovery is poor.
The JSEB, which is looking for an upward revision in its tariff structure at the earliest, has already submitted its plans, including the annual revenue requirement (ARR), to the Jharkhand State Electricity Regulatory Commission (JSERC).
“We have already submitted the plan to the regulatory commission. We will try to identify the high and low revenue generating places. More power will be supplied to areas where earning is more and places where recovery is unsatisfactory will get minimum power,” BM Verma, JSEB chairman, told FE recently. Such proposals have already been accepted in states like Maharashtra and Haryana, he added.
According to Prashant Chaturvedi, assistant engineer at the JSEB chairman’s cell, the board was incurring a loss of around Rs 80 crore per month.
According to the JSEB, costs of generation as well as purchase of power from other sources work out to be Rs 3.30 per unit on an average, while it is selling that at an average of around Rs 1.71 per unit. Again, while the board pays a delayed payment surcharge (DPS) of 2% per annum to agencies like the DVC from whom it buys power, the regulatory commission has made it mandatory for the JESB to collect DPS from its customers at a maximum rate of 1.05%.
“We are in the process of preparing three revenue models and will present them to the JSERC to get one of them approved,” said Chaturvedi, speaking to FE on Monday.
The state, at present, has a maximum conceivable demand of 936mw, with the actual demand during peak hours hovering between 750 and 800mw. “We are falling short by around 200-250mw,” said Chaturvedi.
The JSEB chairman is confident that the situation will “definitely improve in the Adityapur industrial area either by May 31 or latest by June 7”.
Faced with acute power shortage, the board had entered into a short-term agreement with the DVC in September-October 2007 for purchase of 150mw. The DVC, however, has been supplying only 25-50mw. It seldom touches 75mw, said the chairman’s spokesperson.
“We have requested them to find out a formula so that we can get a fixed per centage of their generation,” said Chaturvedi, adding that the JSEB has already approached the court for resolution of the matter.
