PATIALA: With the Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission (PSERC) allowing the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) to recover a sum of Rs 146.35 crore on account of increase in fuel cost adjustment (FCA) surcharge for power generation , power is all set to cost a more in the state.In the latest order, the commission has approved the recovery on account of additional cost paid by the power corporation for generating power at its own thermal generating stations and increase in power purchase cost from other thermal stations under long-term contract during the fourth quarter of 2017-18 fiscal. The FCA surcharge will be levied during the second quarter of current fiscal and the increased cost will subsequently get passed on to the power consumers in the state.The PSPCL had filed the petition for an increase in FCA surcharge on June 8, this year in which it had stated that the coal price and rail freight have led to the increase in variable cost of power purchase during the last quarter of FY 2017-18: the corporation claimed that the Coal India Limited (CIL) in hiked the coal prices Grade-6 to Grade -14 3 to 22% and also imposed a royalty 14% of base price, 30% Royalty towards District Mineral Foundations Trust (DMFT) and 2% towards national Mining Exploration Trust (NMET). The corporation said these additional charge son coal increase the coal price by O.55% to 4.07%. Besides, the CIL levied “Evacuation Facility Charge” @ Rs 50 per MT and management fees @ Rs 1 per MT. besides the sizing and breaking charges were also increased by 10% resulting in an increase of Rs 8 to 10 per MT.The corporation contending that the Surface Transport Charges (STC) were also rationalized that increased from Rs 57 to Rs 73 to 90 for 3 to 10 km distance and from Rs 116 to Rs 123 to 155 for 10 to 20 km distance. The Railways imposed “Busy season charge” at the rate of 15% over and above the base freight rate. Due to this, the effective increase in freight was calculated at 16.54%. Besides, development charges @ 5% and GST @ 5% were also levied by the railways.Further, in the case of Nabha Power Limited (NPL) Rajpura, additional payments against washing charges was also made as per the orders of the Supreme Court which led to further increase in fuel costs.After taking all aspects into consideration, the PSERC concluded that PSPCL has worked out the total FCA amount chargeable as Rs 160.31 crore and calculated chargeable FCA as 17 paise/unit for metered category consumers and 17 paise a unit or Rs 6.94/BHP/month for unmetered category consumers. The Commission observes that PSPCL had worked out the fuel cost of own thermal plants by taking transit loss of coal as 1% instead of actual which is less than 1%. Accordingly, the fuel cost of PSPCL’s Thermal Generating Stations has been reworked by considering the actual transit loss of (-) 1.22% and (-) 2.86%, respectively for GGSSTP and GHTP. The commission said while calculating the chargeable FCA per unit, PSPCL has considered the consumption figures of January 2018 to March 2018.However, the Commission provisionally allowed the recovery of Rs. 146.35 crore on account of increase in fuel cost which would be levied during the second quarter of current, subject to reconciliation or validation during the true-up of FY 2017-18.

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