ISLAMABAD: National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) on Tuesday approved a refund of Rs 3.3 billion, @ Paisa 32.13 per unit to the consumers of power Distribution Companies (Discos) for October 2022 under monthly Fuel Charges Adjustment (FCA) mechanism.
The authority comprising of Chairman Tauseef H Farooqi, Member Sindh Rafique Ahmad Shaikh and Member KP, Anwar Maqsood Anwar Khan approved reduction on the recommendations of tariff section’s team, which verified data submitted by the Central Power Purchasing Agency Guaranteed (CPPA-G).
CPPA-G, in its request had sought an increase of Paisa 25.57 per unit to recover additional amount of Rs 2.55 billion from consumers in October 2022, but Nepra’s tariff team also rationalized some previous adjustments amounting to Rs 2.11 billion instead of allowing positive adjustment of Rs 2.24 billion. Another reason in reduction in FCA was less demand of electricity in the country.
During discussion, it was noted that the government supplied only 400 MMCFD RLNG to power plants in October against demand of 715 MMCFD whose positive financial impact was Rs 260 million.
Chairman NEPRA and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) CPPA-G maintained that since the government is facing financial crunch, LNG spot buying is not feasible at current rates.
In reply to a question raised by Member Sindh, General Manager, NPCC, Sajjad Akhtar stated that they send their fuel (RFO and RLNG) requirement to Power Division three or four months in advance which then sends it onward to Petroleum Division for arrangements.
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Petroleum Division shares its schedule of contracted LNG cargoes and prospects of spot cargoes. Sometimes, RLNG is provided less than the committed quantity but sometimes it exceeds the agreed quantity, keeping in view requirements of other sectors including domestic consumers. Nepra team informed that the regulator has deducted Rs 40 billion of the NPCC due to short supply of RLNG to the power sector during the last three years.
It was also noted that on October 01, 2022 during 0400 – 0600 hours, Engro Thar was underutilized and Nandipur, which was lower in merit order, was operated at higher load.
On query NPCC noted that Nandipur was coming back from outage. However, NPCC has not yet shared the outage details for Nandipur Power Plant on September 30 – October 01.
After going through data, Nepra team calculated a negative adjustment of Paisa 57.83 per unit in FCA for October 2022 against the CPPA-G’s request of positive adjustment of Paisa 25.72 per unit. However, after proposed adjustment of Paisa 0.042 per unit by Monitoring and Enforcement (M&E) Section and Paisa 0.040 per unit on proposal of Technical Section, respectively, the Tariff Section recommended a total negative adjustment of Paisa 32.13 per unit for the month of October 2022. The Authority approved recommendations of Tariff Section.
According to Nepra, the positive impact of FCA for the month of September 2022 was Paisa 8 per unit which was for one month, which implies that cumulative impact of negative FCA in October 2022 would be Paisa 40 per unit.
The negative impact of FCA will not be applied on lifeline consumers, domestic consumers using up to 300 units, agriculture consumers and electric vehicle charging stations.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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