Power tariffs for Steel Industrial units,PIUs revised in Uttarancha

Dehra-dun, Nov 14 (UNI) Uttaranchal Electricity Regulatory Commission has issued an order for revision of tariffs for Steel Industrial Units and other Power Intensive Units (PIU) for the year 2004-05 and 2005-06 according to which effective Electricity tariff payable by such units has been reduced by Rs. 0.72 for 2004-05 and by Rs. 0.65 for 2005-06. However, tariffs for other consumers have not been increased for the present.

According to the official release of UERC Commission earlier, it had placed PIUs in a separate category and fixed their tariff in a way that cheaper power available to Uttaranchal Power Corporation Limited (UPCL) was supplied to other consumers and costlier power was allocated to PIUs.

Some Steel Units of the state filed appeal against this order before the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity.

The Tribunal had directed the Commission to pool the cost of all the power purchases by UPCL and charge it from all consumers at the uniform average rate.

The Commission was also directed to re-determine the tariff for Steel Units not only for future but also for 2004-05 and 2005-06 based on whatever data was available without waiting for comprehensive true up of all expenses of UPCL by yesterday.

Taking suggestions and recommendations of the State Advisory Commission into consideration along with relevant data the Commission issued its order yesterday and according to the order, effective tariff for every KWh has been revised to Rs 3.17 from existing 3.89 for the year 2004-05 and Rs 3.20 from Rs existing 3.85 for 005-06.

The Commission has directed UPCL to recast the bills of Steel Units as per the above tariffs and submit its proposal for making up the resultant revenue loss along with the ARR and Tariff proposals for 2007-08 which is due to be filed by November 30,2006, the release said.

UNI/XC SRS RK1725