BANGALORE: The Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) is preparing to file another tariff hike proposal before the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) by the end of this month. “We will be filing a tariff hike proposal but the exact dates and amounts have not been fixed yet,” said P Manivannan, managing director, BESCOM. He, however, added that the expected hike requested would be somewhere in the range of 50 paise.Following a judgment in November 2011 by the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity, which directed the State Electricity Regulatory Commissions to review power tariffs every year, BESCOM wants to file for tariff hike well before the deadline of November. BESCOM had last year submitted a petition for a hike of 88 paise out of which the KERC had approved a hike of 28 paise in October last year.A way of reducing the load on the system is to balance out the use of power. “If people can reduce the use of appliances like heaters and other load intensive machines from 8 am to 9 pm, we can see a uniform usage graph,” said Manivannan. He urged users to use power intensive machines in the night or early mornings when the load is minimum.According to other sources, BESCOM also has other ambitious plans to educate people on reducing the use during peak hours. With the city using up to 1,800 MW everyday, the tariff hike is seen as unavoidable. However if the usage can be cut down to about 1,500 MW per day, a tariff hike can be avoided, said officials. A massive campaign has been planned with this goal in mind and is expected to take off sometime over the next two months.
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