RGPPL defers decision on CERC order raising tariff

The board of beleaguered Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt Ltd today considered the CERC order that raised tariff of electricity generated by it but deferred a decision till the next board meeting.

"CERC has gone strictly by the rule book to propose an electricity tariff. But this is not a rule book project and so rule book tariff cannot apply to it," an RGPPL official said.

The RGPPL board decided to wait for the outcome of the meeting between Power Secretary H S Brahma and Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) Chairman Pramod Deo over next few days before arriving at a decision.

The options before RGPPL include asking Maharashtra government to pay higher electricity tariff and decommercialising the project machinery.

In an order passed recently, CERC said the target availability for the generation station is not justified for the proposed tariff, as the project's gas availability for 2008-09 has been reduced to 34.3 per cent from 70.2 per cent a year ago.

RGPPL asked for relaxation of the target availability norms on which CERC held that the risk of such low level of operation of the station has to be borne by the power producer.

RGPPL had proposed a tariff hike of up to Rs 4.44 per unit (capacity charge Rs 2.65 + Rs 1.79 fuel charge) for 2009-10, in a petition filed in April.     

The decision on the maintenance agreement with General Electric (GE) will also be taken later.     

In 2007, the power ministry had blamed GE for the turbine failure at the project.     

The power project, rechristened Ratnagiri Gas Power Pvt Ltd was conceived in the early 1990s with a capacity of 2,150 Mw. It ran into a series of problems and was eventually acquired by a group of public-sector banks, the Maharashtra government and financial institutions.