Nepra raises power tariff for Karachi by up to Rs12.68 per unit

The authority on Monday announced its decision on a public hearing it conducted on fuel adjustment charges which K-Electric was levying on its consumers between April – June 2022.

In the detailed decision, Nepra said that negative FCA will not to be passed on to lifeline consumers, residential consumers who consume up-to 300 units and agriculture consumers.

Similarly, positive FCA would not be passed on to the life-line consumers and the difference will be adjusted quarterly.

Moreover, it noted that “K-Electric in its quarterly adjustment had requested for Rs57.98 million on account of positive / negative FCA which had not been recovered / passed on to the consumers during the quarter.

With the additional money sought in line with the decision of Nepra, it was considered.

Nepra explained that it allowed the adjustment charges for April to June 2022, because the FCAs allowed to K-Electric remained positive.

Excess billing?

K-Electric in its request has sought a quarterly adjustment based on the projected units to be sold in the next quarter of 4,615 GWh.

Now KE has provided the actual units it sent out for Jul — Sep 2022, which after adjusting for allowed losses, comes to around 4,390 GWII.

This was used in the calculation of Quarterly Adjustment.

Increase sought

K-electric sent a request to increase its tariffs by upto Rs14.53 per unit.

However, Nepra stated that after examining data provided by K-Electric, Nepra approved provision of power at a rate of Rs12.68.

The decision has also been taken that Nepra would maintain uniform tariff across the country and would bear the differences in tariff through subsidized rates.

Net metering adjustments

Nepra also asked what was the adjustment made to power generation and transmission thanks to net-metering.

The authority asked KE about the excess units of net metering as provided by KE and their cost and whether that was being adjusted in the monthly FCA workings.

For the previous periods, KE was asked to provide details of previous Net Metering units and its financial impact, had the same been accounted for in the respective monthly FCAs.

KE told the authority that it has had an impact of Rs11.7762 million, to be deducted.

Nepra noted that the impact worked out by KE was incomplete as any inclusion of units in monthly FCA would also impact the workings of the quarterly adjustment.

Similarly, quarterly adjustments of K-Electric since January 2019, after inclusion of excess net metering units in the total sent out. This has resulted in additional deduction of Rs84.6 million, thus the total deduction to be made in the current quarterly adjustment is Rs96.42 million, which has accordingly been deducted.