The hike in the power tariff will become effective across the state from Sunday. From Sunday the electricity consumers will have to pay their electricity bills according to the new electricity rates.
It is noteworthy that Uttar Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC) had approved the hike in the power tariff on October 1. UP Power Corporation limited (UPPCl) had to made the new electricity tariff effective within 7 to 10 days after the issuance of a public notice.
The UPPCl has decided to implement the increased tariff from Sunday. The average hike in the power tariff in all the categories is 11.28 per cent including 2.38 per cent regulatory surcharge.
For domestic consumers the hike is around 12 per cent but will become 14.38 per cent after the addition of regulatory surcharge of 2.38 per cent in their electricity bill.
In the domestic category the UPERC had made a hike of 4.5 per cent for the metered domestic consumers whereas for the unmetered domestic consumers the increase in the tariff was over 12 per cent.
The average hike allowed by the regularity commission is around 8.90 per cent in all categories for the financial year 2014-15. last year, the power tariffs were increased by about 30 per cent in the month of June.
While, the average increase in power tariff for residential consumers is 12 per cent, for the industries, commercial and agricultural connections, the average hike is 7.38 per cent, 6.28per cent and 12.20 per cent respectively.
For residential consumers, the average per unit rate has been raised from Rs 3.55 to Rs 3.97. Similarly for industries consumers average per unit rate has been raised from Rs 7.04 to Rs 7.56. For commercial and agricultural connections, the respective figures are Rs 6.64/Rs 7.05 and Rs 3.19/Rs 3.58.
Therefore, the aggregate hike across different consumers comes to about 8.90 per cent with the per unit rate increasing from Rs 4.97 to Rs 5.41. UPERC had claimed that tariff had been designed in such as way that the effective tariff for the consumers having lower consumption would be lesser compared to consumers having higher consumption pattern. This would discourage consumers from using more energy and thus contribute to electricity saving.
UPERC had also declared the new power tariff as performance based power tariff as it has set separate target for UPPCl to bring down the line losses to 23.5 per cent from existing 27.6 per cent.