ISLAMABAD: The K-Electric has proposed a negative adjustment of Rs6.62 per unit for February 2025, aiming to refund Rs6.662 billion to its consumers under the monthly Fuel Charges Adjustment (FCA) mechanism.
However, in its FCA adjustment request for February 2025, K-Electric has submitted that, following the determination of the generation tariff for its power plants for the period of June 2023, it has provided the required partial load, open cycle, and degradation curves, along with the startup cost, for the approval of Rs13.9 billion for the period from July 2023 to February 2025.
This amount is still pending adjustment, of which, Rs7.4 billion has already been accounted for in the FCA decisions for November and December 2024.
KE’s petition: Nepra notifies Rs3.02 relief under Jan FCA
The power utility company has requested that the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) also consider the requested adjustment or the accumulated actualisation of fuel costs, so that the recovery can be made from the negative fuel cost variation for February 2025. This would ensure that consumers are not overburdened at a later stage.
The Nepra is scheduled to hold a public hearing on April 16, 2025, during which K-Electric will present a detailed explanation of the proposed negative FCA adjustment for February 2025.
Representatives from the business community and the public will also share their views on the adjustment of the previous amount.
In addition, Nepra has raised the question of whether K-Electric’s request to consider the adjustment of accumulated actualised fuel costs (pertaining to partial load, open cycle, degradation curves, and startup costs) from July 2023 to February 2025, using the negative fuel cost variation, is justified.
The authority, in its January 2025 determination, noted that in order to avoid overburdening consumers in the future for such pending costs, it had provisionally withheld an amount of Rs7.453 billion from the FCA for November and December 2024. This amount is to be adjusted against the pending costs.
The authority further acknowledged that, despite the Rs7.453 billion already being withheld, approximately Rs6 billion remains pending. In light of this, the authority decided to withhold Rs2 billion from the calculated negative FCA of Rs4.930 billion for January 2025. The authority also took into account the fact that K-Electric has filed a negative FCA request of Rs6.662 billion (i.e., Rs6.62/kWh) for February 2025, which could provide additional margin for adjusting any remaining pending claims, if necessary.
Based on these adjustments, the authority allowed a negative FCA of Rs3.0218/kWh (Rs2.930 billion) for January 2025, which will be passed on to consumers in their April 2025 bills.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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