Small traders worried about paying peak hour charges

CHENNAI: Activists and traders warn that TANGEDCO would incur unwanted expenditure on installing time of the day (ToD) meters on all the premises of LT Commercial consumers including micro and small traders who consume less than 100 units for two months.

In the tariff order, TNERC said that the commission wanted to impose ToD charges only to LT industries and commercial consumers and HT industries and commercial consumers.

The low tension - V which covers all the commercial consumers including the micro and small traders would have to pay the time of the day tariff which is a 25 per cent additional tariff for power consumption during the peak hours of 6 am to 10 am and 6 pm to 10 pm.

Activist S Neelakanta Pillai has complained to the TNERC that charging peak hour charges from micro and small traders with connected load up to four kilowatt are not justified.

Citing the reply given by the TANGEDCO to his comments on the tariff petition, he said that the utility claimed that 53 per cent of the traders come under the category of consuming less than 100 units bimonthly.

“It is roughly worked out to 150 MW demand and cost wise worked out Rs 380 crore against the revenue from entire LT-V is Rs 8,471 crore. This demand is only less than one per cent against the maximum demand reached so far 17,563 MW. Moreover, the installation of ToD meter for 53 per cent low consuming traders would roughly cost Rs 500 crore to Rs 700 crore, ” he said.

V Gopalakrishnan who runs a photocopy shop at MGR Nagar Market said that the micro and small shops should not be clubbed with the malls and other commercial establishments and asked to pay peak hour charges.

“Any increase in the tariff would be transferred to the public. The photocopying charges have been hiked by Rs 0.50 per sheet, ” he said, adding that TANGEDCO should compensate the losses it suffered on the agricultural power subsidies with other consumers.

A senior TANGEDCO official said that they would not collect ToD charges from the LT commercial consumers with four kW demand. “We are planning to install ToD meters on the consumers with 25 kW or more load demand. So the consumers with lower demand need not pay peak hour charges, ” the official clarified.