Hike in power tariffs for the 25 lakh suburban consumers in the city seems inevitable as the Tata Power Corporation (TPC) on Thursday announced that they would withdraw supplying 160 megawatt out of the 360 MW of power it supplies to Reliance Infrastructure Limited (RInfra) from Sunday night. However, the TPC said that they are ready to offer 200 MW to RInfra at Rs 5.90 per unit for the suburban consumers to avoid load-shedding.
The statement was made by the TPC officials, following an announcement made by the RInfra on Wednesday. RInfra had announced that the company, which is the distributor in Mumbai suburbs, will have to resort to either load-shedding or tariff hike in case the TPC does not supply power to them.
The state government had requested the TPC to continue supplying 500 megawatt of power to RInfra, until they issue a final order on the dispute between the two companies, based on the report of a high-level committee in this regard. However, the TPC has refused the request that the government made.
“We do not accept the memorandum of the sub-committee formed by the state government to supply power to RInfra. Starting from Sunday night, we will withdraw 160 MW of power that we are providing to RInfra,” said Mr S. Ramakrishnan, executive director, finance,TPC.
However, he added that the TPC is willing to offer 200 MW at the rate of Rs 5.90 per unit to RInfra. “If
RInfra refuses TPC’s offer then the same 200 MW of power would be offered to Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Corporation Limited (MSEDCL). If MSEDCL also refuses the offer, we will put the same on the state’s grid. As a result RInfra will be forced to draw power either from the state’s grid or from other sources at the market rate,” said Mr S. Padmanabhan, executive director, operations, TPC.
The market rate for each unit of power is Rs 7.10. Whereas, the TPC has been providing power to RInfra as well as the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking at the rate of Rs 3.50.
A TPC official stated that the prime reason behind the withdrawal of power is to honour the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) that they have signed with other distributors. “Currently there is no PPA between the TPC and RInfra, however we are still supplying them power. If we do not stop supplying power to them, we will be forced to buy 160 MW from outside at higher rates, despite being the generators of electricity,” said the chairman of TPC. Terming RInfra as inefficient, TPC officials said that RInfra is threatening the consumers of Mumbai.
However, a spokesperson of the RInfra said, “The TPC’s offer of Rs 5.90 per unit to RInfra for suburban consumers vindicates our stand that they want to profiteer at the expense of Mumbai consumers.”
Meanwhile, Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan on Thursday assured Mumbaikars that there would be no load-shedding or hike in power tariff in Mumbai. The CM said that the issues between the TPC and RInfra would be settled amicably and Mumbaikars would not suffer because of the stand-off between the two power companies. “There won’t be any power crisis. Of course, there are issues which have to be sorted out. There is some problem between RInfra and the TPC, which we are trying to resolve,” Mr Chavan said.