[AkMar]

Hindustan times has done a news piece explaining the other side of the story today.

“If you see the average demand in Mumbai during the day, in these months - it was around 1,800 megawatts (MW), which spiked to 2,400 MW between 11pm and 5am, when the air-conditioners were on,” said Ashok Pendse, a noted Mumbai-based power expert and a consumer representative at the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC).

As per MERC guidelines, meter-reading was suspended at the end of March and utilities were asked to charge consumers based on the average of the preceding three months - December, January and February, which were winter months. “This effectively means that consumers underpaid in the months of April and May when consumption was high. And in June, when actual meter-reading began, the residual electricity amount was also taken into consideration,”

A BJP MLA from Mumbai, who has been addressing complaints in his area since a month, said, “In my own house, all gadgets were in use throughout the day during the lockdown. People are not able to accept this fact, and their frustration, also a result of the lockdown, is pouring on social media. Owing to the lockdown and job losses, people’s income and spending capacity have also reduced.”

Full story here

Over the last month, the Adani Electricity Mumbai Limited (AEML), the largest power distributor in Mumbai, received 48,000 complaints on inflated power bills. Adani officials, however, said that only 2,111 complaints need a re-validation.

Kandarp Patel, CEO, AEML said, “We had intimated consumers via messages and email that there will be an increase in billing later owing to the lockdown and suspension of actual meter-reading. In 2019, we had observed a 33% difference in consumption between the winter and summer months. This year, owing to the lockdown, there has been a 50% difference in consumption.”

He also said that if consumers were billed as per 2019’s consumption in March, April and May, it would have been better, however, power regulations restrict billing, in such case, to calculate as per the presiding three months.

Full story here

[sagaranjos]

I am in Bengaluru and thought that BESCOM was taking me for a ride. But after some analysis, I realised the calculations were confusing but correct.

If you live in Bengaluru and received a huge bill this month, read on to undersand why!

There are 2 reasons for that huge bill you received!
One - This is a bill for 2 months, March and April 2020, combined .
Two - Most probably you have been using more electricity since you and your family have been locked up in your house. (in my case, the units went up by 35%)

What BESCOM did was, for the month of March 2020, they gave a bill based on the average consumption. (since they couldn't take a reading due to the lockdown)
By the end of April 2020, they took the actual readings and calculated the total bill amount for the months of both March and April combined.
And then they adjusted the amount from the previous March bill (based on average consumption) against the total. This should show up as a deduction in your April bill.


Now how does BESCOM calculate your electricity bill?

There are 2 components in your electricty bill.

One is the fixed component, which depends on the sanctioned load. sanctioned load is expressed in KiloWatt or KW. In my case it is 5KW
The fixed component is the amount you'll have to pay even if you don't use any electricity at all.

The second component is the energy charges which is a variable component that depends on how much electricity you consume.
The electricity consumption is expressed in units. The units consumed is the difference between your meter reading at the end of the month and the reading at the start of the month. Each unit corresponds to 1Kilo Watt Hour (KWh) consumption.
The energy charges are calculated using a slab wise calculation as follows.




I have put together a nifty tool which lets you do this calculation.
You can download the tool (BESCOM Electricity Bill Calculator) at the bottom of this post.

Hope this puts to rest your queries. If you still think you received a wrong bill, feel free to get in touch with your BESCOM sub-section office.

PS: The April 2020 bill provides double the units in each slab to account for the 2 months for which the bill is generated.
Pretty smart work by the BESCOM to incorporate this change at such short notice.
But sadly it wasn't communicated in advance and thus led to a lot of confusion.


LINKS
https://bescom.org/frequently-asked-...ons-2/billing/
https://bescom.org/contactus/

[moralfibre]

Originally Posted by H Karter

For MSEDCL, I can still vouch for that we supply electricity at the rate of candles. For a monthly bill of Rs.300 one can still use 4 led bulbs and a fan. But with a Rs.10 candle a day life would be harder.

Respected Mods, please correct me if I had been off topic or got carried away.

Thanks for the detailed insight. I had indeed confirmed that my bill was accurate after many bhpians confirmed it. Appreciate your detailed explanation.

Although, one feedback would be that the IT team needs to get a better UI for the discom portal. It looks and feels straight out of the 90s

On that note, welcome aboard! Team-bhp members never fail to amaze me with their vast and varied backgrounds.

[libranof1987]

What an accounting mess MSEDCL has done. In my case, they have taken an arbitrary number for consumption units for the May bill. In the June bill, they have considered the reading on the Apr bill as "start date" and reduced some arbitrary number as "average payment amount".

I paid Rs. 1810 in June, but the current bill has only Rs. 1645 reduced. Can someone figure this out?!

May bill: 16645 - 16884


June bill: 16884 - not mentioned but charged for 183 units. Paid 1810.



July bill: 16884 - 17396


Charged for two months but reduced only 1645 (diff. of 165)