The Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) has sought a month's time from the Supreme Court and the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (ATE) to announce its final order on the issue of impact of cross subsidy in claculation of electricity tariff.
The state power regulator was earlier directed by the apex court to decide on the issue by November 30.
“We have requested the Supreme Court and ATE to allow us a month's time to give our order on the matter of cross subsidy burden in the power tariff. Different stakeholders have sought 15 days to submit their comments to OERC on the matter. OERC would announce its order on the matter by the end of December,” a top OERC official told Business Standard.
The commission had conducted public hearing on the issue of cross subsidy on November 24-25.
Officials of state owned Grid Corporation of Orissa (Gridco), general public and activists had voiced stiff opposition to the order of ATE during the hearing. Only a few industry associations backed the implementation of the tribunal's order. There are concerns that implementation of the ATE order would push up cost of power for the domestic consumers and hurt collection for distribution companies.
Acting on the directive of the Supreme Court, the OERC had taken up public hearing here on the issue of cross subsidy burden in power tariff on November 24-25.
Upholding an order of ATE, the apex court on September 30, had directed OERC to calculate cross subsidy on the basis of cost of power supply to the consumers.
Also Read
The appellate tribunal in its order dated May 30 this year had held that the methodology used by OERC for determination of cross subsidy was not in accordance with the law and it had set aside the tariff order passed by the commission.
“The State Commission has expressed difficulties in determining cost of supply in view of non-availability of metering data and segregation of the network costs. In our opinion, it will not be prudent to wait indefinitely for availability of entire data and it would be advisable to initiate a simple formulation which could take into account the major cost elements,” the tribunal had stated in its order.
The OERC was directed to determine voltage-wise cost of supply and the cross subsidy was to be calculated on the basis of cost of power supply to the consumer category.
The tribunal had asked the state commission not to increase cross subsidy but to reduce it gradually.
The appellants being aggrieved over the methodology adopted by the state commission while calculating the cross subsidy had contested the commission's order in the appellate tribunal.
The appellants had complained that cross subsidy was calculated by OERC without taking into account cost of supply to high-tension power consumers.
A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the order of OERC was filed in the Orissa High Court. The High Court had stayed the revision for domestic consumers while allowing the hike for other categories of consumers.