AMARAVATI: The Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (APERC) on Wednesday issued the Retail Tariff Order for 2022-23, announced new charges for revising retail power supply prices in 2022–23 which will come into effect from April 1.

The revised rates will protect the interests of consumers and provide financial security to DISCOMs, APERC Chairman Justice (Retd.) C V Nagarjuna Reddy stated on Wednesday in Tirupati. The decision was taken to bring six slabs under the same group to replace the existing categories without burdening household electricity consumers. The three discoms are expected to generate additional revenue of about Rs 1,400 crore per annum due to the increase in charges by an average of 3.26 percent across all sectors combined. Overall, according to the APERC, the power tariff hike would impact over 170 lakh consumers, benefiting 20.76 lakh consumers from any kind of tariff hike, and the tariff hike ranges from 45 paise to Rs 1.57 per unit in six different slabs only for domestic consumption.

According to the latest hike in power tariff in Andhra Pradesh, the hike will be 45 paise per unit for 30 units, 91 paise per unit for 31 to 75 units, and 40 paise per unit for 76 to 125 units, 57 paise for 126 to 225 units, Rs. 1.16 for 226 to 400 units respectively.

The APERC has stated the rationalisation of the tariff structure by merging all three existing groups in the domestic category into one group under the telescopic billing system.

The three Discoms projected an aggregate revenue requirement of Rs 45,398.66 crore for the 2022-23 financial year. The three Discoms projected an aggregate revenue requirement of Rs 45,398.66 crore for the 2022-23 financial year.

The state government agreed to extend a subsidy of Rs 11,123.21 crore to the Discoms, with Rs 9,513 crore of it going towards free power to the agriculture sector alone.

The council also directed that customers should be supported through an additional load regularization portal between the distribution companies to sort out the additional load issues.

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