Nepra hikes electricity prices for Karachi

Nepra has increased the price by Rs4.70 for KE.

ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) - The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) on Tuesday has hiked the price of power by Rs4.70 per unit for Karachi.

Nepra issued a tariff adjustment decision for the pending fuel adjustment charges that were to be incurred on K-Electric for past four years. Nepra allowed KE to collect Rs106 billion from electric consumers.

Electricity rate has been increased to Rs4.70 per unit while an approval has been given to increase tariff from Rs12.81 to Rs17.69 per unit. Nepra has issued a decision for the period from July 2016 to March 2019. 

On Dec 27, The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) on Friday approved a surge of Rs1.40 per unit in power tariff for Karachi Electric (KE), putting a burden of more than Rs18 billion on consumers in next nine months.

The increase in the cost of electricity has been given on account of fuel adjustment for last three years, while consumers will also get a relief for 15 months in bills. Electric customers will be charged in their bills from January 2020 to September 2020.

The consumers will be charged Rs1.66 per unit in January, Rs2.88 per unit in February, Rs2.30 per unit in March, Rs2.13 per unit in April, Rs2.37 in May, Rs1.98 per unit in June, Rs1.16 per unit in July, Rs1.23 per unit in August and Rs1.37 per unit in the month of September.

On Dec 26, The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) allowed Rs1.56 per unit increase in power tariff for all the power distribution companies, except K-Electric, on account of fuel price adjustment for the month of October.

The decision was taken at a monthly public hearing scheduled for Dec. 26 at 11am in Islamabad.

The Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA), on behalf of the distribution companies (DISCOs), had filed a petition for tariff increase saying the actual fuel cost in October was higher than that charged to the consumers, and hence an increase of Rs1.73 per unit be allowed to be recovered from consumers next month.

The higher tariff approved by the regulator is expected to generate about Rs14.5 billion additional revenue to the power companies during the next billing month i.e. January, 2020.

The adjustment, however, is not applicable to K-Electric and lifeline consumers using less than 50 units of other Discos.

The CPPA had sought permission for increasing consumer tariff by Rs1.7397 per unit. It told the regulator that it had charged reference fuel price of Rs3.7579 per unit from consumers in October, while the actual cost turned out to be Rs5.4976 per unit.

The CCPA said that a total of 9,296.60 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity was generated in October. Net electricity delivered to power distribution companies was 9,572.06GWh, whereas transmission losses came to 258.94GWh.

The regulator was told that the highest 25.48pc electricity was generated from hydel sources, around 12.17pc of electricity was generated from natural gas, and 25.41pc electricity was generated from RLNG-based, and no power was generated using high speed diesel in the month of October.

The NEPRA officials were of the view that power generation companies’ performance has been improved in terms of curbing losses.