Team-BHP - Mumbaikars : How are your electricity bills treating you?

Man, I just got my office power bill (B.E.S.T.) and its up a whopping 75% MORE compared to the previous month!! This has nothing to do with the summer as our power consumption was near identical to the previous months. Apparently, rates have shot up in the recent past.

Quote:

Reliance Energy Limited consumers will have to pay between 4% and 69% more while BEST consumers will have to pay between 15% and 84% more. This means households across Mumbai will get bills with a Rs 50 to Rs 100 hike on an average.

Have you got the shock yet?

Links to TOI news article

Yes we have recd bills for office and residences and they are straight away a hike from an average Rs.5 per unit to Rs 8 per unit. The additional charges are mainly termed as "Reliability Charges"
Meaning thereby that otherwise we would also have load shedding like all other parts of the country and state.
Guess its again the Premium for Mumbai the future Shanghai to be!!

Yep...got the bill from Reliance Energy, mentioning the aforesaid "Reliability Charge". I guess the "reliability" they refer to means consistent (and reliable) power outages. In the last one month, we have had power off so frequently, that Reliance customer care execs probably recognise my voice now when I call.

Sorry state of affairs for sure, when you pay through your nose, and don't even get what you pay for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by scooby05 (Post 502880)

Aha, so thats the premium we have to pay for not having power cuts? Suddenly I am not complaining so much anymore.

But the first choice would still be reliability + old rates. Should'nt that have been a given? How much longer are these "reliability" charges going to continue?

Till the time you are given reliable power. well lets face it, once a levy is started, do we still expect a withdrawal?
or do we want power cuts or load shedding? there are towns in our country that go without power for 10 hours a day!!
On a manufactured product we have the following levies
Excise duty, Education cess, Octroi duty, Entry tax, CST, Vat, after all that we still have the Income tax, Dividend Tax,STT,BTT, Surcharge.
phew Im tired.
Petrol has gone up and up only. If at all they increase by Rs 3 and reduce by 70 paisa. so overall only goes up.
Lets learn to live with "reliability Charges" dont want a generator in every shop/office/flat!!

I stay as well as work in Navi mumbai. The power bills have shot up by 50 % at my home for last one year as they charge something called ASC(Additional Surcharge) for the power purchased from outside the state or other parties.

75% increase in office/factory bills as the ASC charged is very high and as a industial unit we already pay very high charges compared to the residential charges. Above ASC they also charge something called FAC(fuel Charges). my average bill around a year back was 25000/month, which has now reached upto 40000/- month just because of ASC which is levied.

when asked when will all this ASC thing end, they just reply that when MSEB will stop purchasing power from outside, they will stop charging but still i dont know when will it end.

service is pathetic as we end up with power cuts intermittently, sometimes from the main line or sometimes from the local distribution boxes.

Mansi

Just got the electricity bill for my recidence from BEST. It's 40% more than the last month's.
Think you've heard it all? Now hear this.
My aunt who lives in the same locality as I, gets a bill of approximately Rs.1000/- per month. This time, BEST has charged her a whopping Rs. 7000/-!
She's shocked big time!

My electricity is from MSEB - not BSES. Till 6 months back my bills used to be in the range of 1200-1800. For the last 6 months it's 2200-2500 - I think rates were raised 6 months back.

This month, the bill is a whopping 3500 Rs - I still haven't got the bill in hand to see what's the reason - but what's the way to complain/figure out why the bill is so high?

Same here. Generally the bill ranges from 3k to 4.5k from March to October when 3 air conditioners are used at night. From November to February, the bill around 2k. Just received the bill for last month, it was 4.4k even though not one AC was used in the entire month!

Incidentally last night on the radio (the FM Gold, not the private channels!) a debate was held on the energy efficiency, the need for it and what the government and the people can do to consume less energy. One of the measures suggested was to mandate that all new buildings are made energy efficient.

One of the participants commented that none of the growing cities in India are energy efficient, and that's majorly due to the lack of attention paid towards using the natural energy while constructing the building.

One of the speakers introduced an interesting paradox: People complaining they don't have enough energy, so how do they conserve it?

Just thought I would post it here.

In Mumbai in some areas, it is possible to switch over service provider from Reliance to Tata power. For our house in Dahisar, we got this done over a year back.
I have observed that the bills post the changeover are definitely about 30% lesser than what Reliance used to charge. Power stability is high and outage is low at par with Reliance. You can refer to the Tata power's website and consider switching over if possible.