After receiving a letter from the Delhi Government regarding imposition of penalties on power discoms in case they fail to restore power within one hour of any unscheduled outage,
Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) on Thursday proposed amendments to Delhi Electricity Supply Code and Performance Standards Regulations, 2007. DERC also invited all stakeholders to submit their comments and objections to the Commission before June 29.
The amendments are aimed to reduce the maximum time limit for restoration of power supply and to make the process for compensation to the affected consumer more stringent.
However, as opposed to the deadline of one hour to restore power as suggested by the Delhi Government, DERC has proposed different deadlines for different causes of outages with three hours being the maximum limit in case the outage is due to broken service line, blown fuse etc.
DERC has proposed that in case the power is not restored in these cases within three hours, a penalty of Rs100 per consumer is proposed to be charged.
But in case the power outage is due to fault in distribution mains or burnt distribution transformer and it affects more than 50 consumers, the maximum time to temporarily restore power from an alternate source or a mobile transformer is proposed to be one hour. In these cases, if the power is not restored within an hour, a penalty of Rs50 per hour per consumer is proposed for first two hours and Rs100 per consumer for every hour thereafter.
Meanwhile, sources in the power industry feel that Delhi is the only State in the country where the norms governing power supply are already quite stringent. According to DERC regulations, total outages can’t exceed 1 per cent of the total power supply and discoms have been meeting this norm for almost 250 weeks, a source said.
In the draft amendments proposed by the DERC, it has said that the discoms will have to compensate the affected consumer within 90 days from the date of filing of claim. However, if the outage is due to power supply failure (due to failed mains, MCB tripped, burnt transformer etc.), the discoms will have to suo motu compensate the consumer within 90 days irrespective of filing of a claim. All payments will be made by way of adjustment against electricity bills.
Also, as the Delhi Government had stated in its letter to DERC chairman PD Sudhakar, DERC has proposed that the amount of compensation paid by the discoms will not be recovered in the Aggregate Revenue Requirement (ARR). This means that the burden of the compensation paid to affected consumers won’t fall on the rest of the consumers.
DERC has also proposed that the discoms will have to maintain consumer-wise records regarding the guaranteed standards of performance in order to give a fair treatment to all consumers and avoid any dispute regarding violation of standards.
It has further proposed that if the compensation is not paid suo motu by the discoms, the consumer can approach respective consumer grievance redressal forum. And if the claim is upheld by the forum, the compensation to be paid by the discoms shall be determined at the rate of Rs5,000 or five times the compensation payable on suo motu basis, whichever is higher.
On June 18, Deputy Secretary (power) Alka Sharma had written in a letter to DERC chairman
PD Sudhakar that if any unscheduled power cut was not restored within an hour, a penalty of Rs50 per hour per consumer may be charged from the companies for a period of first two hours with the penalty amount doubled after two hours. In the letter, she had also suggested that the same money should be credited to the affected consumers.
The letter had also stated that if the compensation was not paid suo motu by discoms, and if any affected consumer approached the DERC for their compensation claim, the penalty amount in such cases would be Rs5,000 or five times the compensation payable on suo motu basis, whichever is higher.