Maharashtra open access consumers to pay additional surcharge

The Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) has announced various charges payable by open access consumers for financial years 2020-21 to 2024-25. MSEDCL has claimed that as many consumers are buying power under open access instead of availing supply from it, the generation capacity tied up by MSEDCL remains idle. For the applicability of cross-subsidy surcharge, MSEDCL said that it needs to be based on the current level. Accordingly, the consumers who opted for open access need to be charged for the compensation of current level approval of truing-up for 2017-18 and 2018-19, provisional truing-up for 2019-20 and the aggregate revenue requirement for the fourth control period from financial year 2020-21 to financial year 2024-25.