National capital’s power regulator, Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) has notified a new compensation policy for electricity consumers of the city. The power body, in a notification dated December 18, 2018, has made certain changes in the Supply Code 2017 with the third amendment after the directions of the Delhi government.

The regulations are called ‘Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (Supply Code and Performance Standards) (Third Amendment) Regulations, 2018, and it mandates all payments of compensation to be made by way of adjustment in current and/or future bills for supply of electricity.

Now in case of unscheduled power cuts lasting more than one hour, the consumer will be paid compensation of Rs 50 per hour for first two hours and Rs 100 per hour subsequently. If interruption reoccurs, the compensation will be paid from the initial default.

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Discoms will require to upload on its website the list of its offices and designated officers to settle claims for compensation.

According to the official notification, for the failure of standards of performance other than power supply failure, Discom has to compensate the affected person(s) within a maximum period of 90 days from the date of filing his claim. Moreover, the affected person needs to file a claim within a maximum period of 60 days from the date of failure of the Discom to meet the standards of performance.

For failure of standards of performance for restoration of power supply, the compensation has to be paid by Discoms automatically to all the affected consumers, without requiring a claim to be filed by the consumer.

The new rules, which are available on the official website of DERC, require that the power companies enclose a statement of (i) scheduled power outages, (ii) unscheduled power outage separately occurred during the previous billing cycle and the amount of compensation payable to the consumer in each instance to the current bill.

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Also in case of complaints of meter burnt or stolen, the power supply has to be restored within three hours.

After the restoration of power supply, a confirmation message shall be sent to the consumer with restoration date and time.