ISLAMABAD - The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has Tuesday allowed an increase of Rs 2.5272 per unit in power tariff on account of fuel charge adjustments for the month of September.
Last month, NEPRA had conducted public hearing on the Central Power Purchasing Agency Guarantee Limited’s (CPPA-G) petition for an increase of Rs 2.66 per unit in power tariff on account of FCA for September 2021.The regulator had noted that an additional burden of Rs 2.07 billion occurred due to violation of merit order. In a petition submitted to NEPRA on the behalf of power distribution companies (Discos), CPPA-G said that for the month of September the reference fuel charges from the consumers were Rs 5.0229 per unit while the actual fuel cost was Rs 7.6816 per unit.
The increase of Rs 2.5272 per unit will have an impact of Rs 37 billion on power consumer. The increase shall be applicable to all the consumer categories except lifeline consumers and shall be shown separately in. the consumers’ bills on the basis of units billed to the consumers in the month of September 2021. XWDISCOs shall reflect the September 2021 FCA in the billing month of November 2021.
The CPPA-G further said the total energy generated during September was 14031.89GWh, less than the August generation of 16078.09 GWh, at the total cost of Rs 95.361b. The cost of per unit energy was Rs 6.7960 per unit. According to the CCPA-G data, net electricity delivered to Discos was 13,629.91 GWh at the cost of Rs 104.699b or Rs 7.6816 per unit.
CPPA-G also claimed amount of Rs. 10,062 million on account of previous adjustments for the month of September 2021 and the Authority verified the same as Rs.10,018 million. The difference of Rs.30.169 million is on account of previous adjustment claimed for Tavanir Iran, which has not been considered and would be accounted for only once the Authority decides the PAR submitted by CPPA-G in this regard. The difference of Rs.14.071 million is due to difference in technical factors provided by CPPA-G viz a viz technical factors verified by NEPRA.
During the hearing, the Authority also observed that, prima facie, certain efficient power plants were not fully utilized and instead energy from costlier RFO/HSD based power plants was generated to the tune of over Rs.19.233 million during the month of September 2021. The Authority has been directing NPCC/NTDC & CPPA-G repeatedly to provide complete justification in this regard, to the satisfaction of the Authority and submit complete details for deviation from Economic Merit Order (EMO). NPCC/NTDC during the hearing, explained operation of power plants on RFO/HSD is due to increase in demand, outage of HBS and non-availability of RLNG as per requirements.
NPCC explained that RLNG quota allocated to power sector was around 650 mmcfd while their requirement was more 900 mmcfd. Representative of MOE, while explaining the reason for less allocation of RLNG, submitted that RLNG terminal#1 was on dry docking from September 14-17. Representative of MOE also explained that out of 1200mmcfd RLNG on both terminals around 800mmcfd is allocated to SNGPL and same is distributed based on their merit order to power sector, fertilizer and CNG sector, thus there is supply constraint. Upon inquiry MOE representative explained that domestic sector is top priority and power sector is ‘2’ on list. Based on the submission the Authority inquires that if SNGPL quota is only 800 mmcfd then how can they meet the 950 mmcfd demand. MOE, while agreeing with Authority, said till addition of new terminal the supply issue while remain intact.
Representative of CPPA-G explained that SNGPL has firm supply agreement with only QATPL, HBS and Balloki power plants, for others t provides RLNG as and when available basis. Due to non-firm contract with other RLNG based power plants SNGPL cannot plan its procurement of RLNG.
On the issue of non-firm contract the Authority said that in this case SNGPL can procure RLNG based on spot market if Power Division place its demand to petroleum division. The Authority also questioned the performance of NTDC regarding removal of technical constraints. Upon inquiry NPCC explained that in period of loadshedding RFO based power plants located in Load center and now the cheaper plants installed in far from load center which emerged constraints and NTDC is working on the constraints aggressively which is evident from fact that loadshedding due to constraint as compared to previous year reduced by 25%.
Further, while reviewing the FCA claim, the Authority observed that Partial Load was provided to Balloki, HBS and QATPL power plants even during Forced Outages and Failure to Achieve Despatch (FADL)), which is non-performance/fault of the said power producers. The Authority is of the considered view that Part Load can only be provided if the Plant is available but NPCC despatches it on part load due to system requirement. Similarly, Part Load cannot be provided in the case of failure of the plant to achieve the despatch instructed by the NPCC. Therefore, an amount of Rs 30.92m (Rs. 26.27 million for Balloki, Rs. 04.17 million for Bhikki and Rs. 0.48 for HBS) for the month of August 2021 has been deducted on account of Partial Load charges, while working out the FCA of August 2021.