Now, KSEB gets a shock treatment

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) performed a neat surgery on Thursday on a KSEB proposal for  imposing power restrictions on domestic consumers. The commission fixed 300 units as the monthly ceiling on power consumption with immediate effect, rejecting the KSEB proposal which pegged it at 150 units.The power restrictions will be in place till May 31.Consumption over and above 300 units a month will be charged at `10 per unit.Other low tension category consumers will be supplied power at normal tariff up to 90 per cent of consumption. The remaining ten per cent will charged at `10 per unit. The half-hour cyclic loadshedding will continue up to May 31 as decided earlier.With the commission trimming down the KSEB proposal, the restrictions will affect only 1.19 lakh of the 85.38 lakh domestic consumers. Had the KSEB proposal been permitted per se, 9.5 lakh domestic consumers would have been hit.  The KSEB proposal  had come in for severe criticism at a public hearing on Wednesday with the commission saying it would hurt consumers as never before. The KSEB had originally proposed loadshedding for the LT category, including domestic consumers and ten percent restrictions for the HT/EHT category.But the commission found this discriminatory and asked the KSEB to “spread the cheese evenly.” Consequently, the KSEB proposed 300 units as ceiling for domestic category in the bi-monthly billing cycle (150 units a month) and ten per cent restrictions on the other LT categories.