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Now consumers can choose their discom

Smriti Kak Ramachandran

Those who consume over 1MW of power can opt for ‘open access’

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission wants to make the process of “open access” a practice where users who consume more than 1MW of power can choose their electricity distributor, something that sounds attractive to the power distribution companies as well as the power consumers.

Having already framed the regulations for allowing consumers to choose their distributor, DERC is now working out the charges for open access that can be availed of by consumers with a contract demand of more than 1 MW of power from this coming July 1.

To rule out any financial burden on the consumers, the Commission has put forth several formulations to deduce a surcharge that will be notified by June or July following a public hearing. “Open access is the essence of electricity reforms. It is a practice that needs to be encouraged and made attractive to the consumers as well as the distribution companies,” said DERC Secretary Amrinder Tewari.

Referring to scepticism about the viability of the scheme, Mr. Tewari said: “Internationally it has not been as successful as it should have been, but this is where we need to put in more effort. Taking note of all the concerns, DERC is inviting suggestions from the stakeholders to make it successful and beneficial.”

According to Mr. Tewari, open access will encourage the discoms to perform better as there will be incentives for better delivery.

The DERC has proposed that the transmission and wheeling charges for open access consumers connected to the intra-State transmission and distribution system will be stipulated on rupees per MW per day basis in keeping with the prevalent regulations relating to open access as well as multi-year tariff.

As for deciding the surcharge, the Commission has put forth some suggestions to work out the rebate that should be offered to the power discoms. “Surcharge is the main issue that needs to be settled because whatever the discoms will lose from big consumers moving out of their network, they will pass on to the other consumers. We do not want the other consumers or the discoms to suffer losses. So the surcharge would be determined by the Commission to compensate for the loss in the current level of cross-subsidy from the category of consumers to which the open access consumer belongs and would be paid to the respective distribution licensee of the area of supply,” Mr. Tewari said.

The Commission has proposed calculation of surcharge based on the marginal cost of power purchase which would be avoided with the open access consumers moving away from the system or by taking into consideration the average cost of supply for such consumers since the retail supply tariff takes into consideration the average cost of power procurement rather than marginal pricing.

Apart from these charges, the Commission will also fix the additional surcharge, scheduling and system operation charges besides interchange, reactive energy and miscellaneous charges.

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