The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government has announced exemption of fixed demand charges (FDC) on electricity bills for industries during the lockdown period yesterday, SteelMint’s participants reported.
This has been done as industries have been badly hit due to lockdown in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and in order to relieve their financial burden.
In addition to removing FDC by UP Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL), the bill payment due date has been extended till 30 Apr’20, as revealed by sources. Also they believe that the bill payment due date may get extended further.
Talking about the industries’ electricity usage and daily production, there are about 90-100 steel mills based in major markets of UP (including furnaces & rolling mills) with a total daily production capacity of over 15,000 MT. However for a long time, the production utilization has been marked at about 40-50%. Currently the mills have totally suspended operations due to lock down.
There are mostly about 8, 10 & 12 MT furnaces in UP, for which electricity load is about 3,000-5,000 KVA & the average charges reported at INR 6.65-7.10/unit, which varies according to the load/power consumption.
Gujarat govt was the first to announce removal of FDC for a month i.e. Apr’20. Thereafter Maharashtra govt temporarily suspended it for 3 months, as per reports.
Chhattisgarh, Raipur based Steel mills have also requested the government to remove fixed electricity charges & minimum demand charges, however there is no further update from the authority.
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