Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020

The Union Ministry of Power recently drafted the Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020. These rules are being drafted for the first time in the Indian history.

The Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules 2020 are as follow:

Reliability of services

The average number and duration of usages per consumer per year for the DISCOMs are to be fixed by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission. What is Power Outage? It is the loss of electric power per year for the DISCOM.

Timely and simplified procedure for connection

The procedure to get a new connection has been simplified greatly under the new rules. Only two documents re required to set up a connection of 10 KW of load. The need to estimate the demand charges for loads up to 150 KW has been removed. The time duration to provide a new connection in metro cities has been fixed as seven days, in municipal areas it has been fixed as fifteen days, rural areas, it has been fixed as thirty days.

Rebate

A rebate of 2% to 5% has been fixed on serving bills with delay of sixty days or more.

Bill Payment

The consumers can pay the bills in cash only if their bill amount is less than Rs 1000. Bills greater than Rs 1000 are to be paid online.

Prosumers

A new category of Prosumers has been identified under the new rule. Prosumers are those consumers who have the right to produce electricity for self-use and inject excess to the grid. They are also consumer who have set up rooftop units or solarised irrigation pumps. The excess power is fed into the grid using the same point of connection. The limits to inject into the grid is set by SERC.

Consumer Grievance Redressal Forum

A Consumer Grievance Redressal Forum is to be established. The forum will have representatives of consumers at various levels. It includes sub-division for ease of consumer grievance redressal.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2020