Karnataka: KERC Asks Discoms To Check Faulty Open Access Bills

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The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) has now expressed its displeasure over faulty open access bills for the power consumers in Karnataka. This comes after the state power regulator has asked the discoms to use automatic bill generations by ensuring adjustment of the wheeled energy.

“The Commission notes with pleasure that the above directions (2023 guidelines) are not being followed. It has come to the notice to the Commission that the ESCOMs are issuing bills to consumers without allocating the Open Access/wheeled energy and subsequently issuing the revised bills, causing hardships to the consumers,” the order of KERC read.

The state commission in its latest suo motto order has now asked the discoms in the state to issue the bills by properly taking into account the Open Access and wheeled energy. The order also empowered the power consumers to deny paying such faulty bills. 

“The ESCOMs shall follow the guidelines issued by the Commission cited supra in the order dated 29.03.2023 in OP NO 52/2021 and before issuing the bills to consumers, the ESCOMs shall account for Open Access/Wheeling Energy. The ESCOMs are directed not the issue the bills without accounting for OA/wheeling energy. OA consumers need not pay the bills, if the issued bills without accounting for IOA/wheeled energy and ESCOMs cannot disconnect electricity for such consumer for non-payment,” the KERC order said.

The 2023 KERC guidelines 

The earlier issued guidelines for the open access consumers said that the discoms needed to install Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) for these consumers.

“With effect from 1.08.2023 all meter reading at the injection point and at the drawl point of consumers shall be brought through AMR and the data shall be transferred automatically to the billing software, for automatic generation of bills. The necessary web portal and system integration shall be put in place by KPTCL/ESCOMs. Without waiting for the above cut off date, wherever AMR is installed and communication facility is in place, the billing shall be automated,” the KERC order then had said.

These norms also talked about the conditions of over injection of energy and the under injection of energy. “The billing section shall prepare the bill after deducting the consumption by the consumers from various open access sources like IEX, Wheeling etc and send it to the concerned consumers by the 5th day of the calendar month,” the norms read.