Ahmedabad: Giving an effective relief of around 30 paise per unit to its around 23 lakh customers in the three cities of Gujarat i e Ahmedabad, Surat and capital Gandhinagar, Torrent power, one of India’s largest private sector power utilities company, today announced to reduce its FPPPA (Fuel and Power Purchase Rate Adjustment) charge from Rs 1.30 per unit in the first quarter (April-June 2016) of the current fiscal to Rs 0.80 in the second quarter (July-September 2016).

Though the reduction in FPPPA is 50 paise per unit compared to last quarter of the current fiscal, recovery of regulatory charge at 18 paise per unit in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar and 17 paise in Surat has brought down the effective relief in tariff to 32 paise per unit for Ahmedabad and Surat customers and 33 paise per unit for Surat.

However on an Year on Year basis comparison the relief to the consumers as compared to the Q 2 of last fiscal is around Rs one per unit as the FPPPA in Q2 last year was Rs 1.98.

Torrent power spokesperson Jayesh Desai said that FPPPA is an important component of its effective tariff (i.e. Tariff + FPPPA charge + Regulatory Charge).

He said that it has been reduced to Rs 0.80 per unit for the current quarter as against Rs 1.98 per unit in the comparable quarter of previous year representing a noteworthy reduction of Rs 1.18 per unit Y-o-Y. This announcement follows the reduction in FPPPA to Rs 1.30 per unit already effected by Torrent in Q1 of FY 17.

Meanwhile, a company statement issued today said that the FPPPA charge varies from quarter to quarter, in accordance with a formula approved by the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission( GERC), on account of variations in actual cost of power procurement (which in turn is greatly dependent on the cost of coal and gas in the Domestic and International markets) and volume. Torrent makes all efforts to optimise the cost while always according equal priority to maintaining the highest standards of reliability and quality of power.

A separate Regulatory Charge of Rs 0.18 per unit in case of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar and Rs 0.17 per unit in case of Surat to recover Torrent’s past approved under-recoveries is effective since July 1, 2016 which was not applicable in the previous Year. Even after accounting for the Regulatory Charge, all categories of consumers in the three cities will on a net basis save Rs 1 per unit as compared to previous year on account of the reduced FPPPA charge. If applied on a typical residential consumer’s bill, this saving of Rs 1 per unit translates to a significant reduction of approx. 17% in the effective tariff for such residential consumer on Y-o- Y basis, the statement said.

This significant reduction in effective tariff could be achieved on account of operational efficiency and cost reduction in power procurement despite the fact that Torrent continues to invest heavily in its operations in the cities of Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Surat in order to continuously improve its already high standard of service in the industry, it said.

Torrent Power with its current operational generation capacity of around 3333 MW distributes nearly 14.67 billion units to over 3.06 million customers in the cities of Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surat and Dahej SEZ in Gujarat, Bhiwandi in Maharashtra and Agra in Uttar Pradesh. Of these around 2.3 million are from the three cities of Gujarat. The billing formula for Dahej SEZ is different.

DeshGujarat