Compensation to be paid in case of failure to meet standards
*Licensees to submit quarterly reports on achieving benchmarks
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, June 15: In a major step aimed at ensuring efficient and reliable power supply to the consumers across the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir and Union Territory of Ladakh and to address their grievances in a time-bound manner, the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC) has notified Standard of Performance for the Distribution Licensee Regulations, 2023.
Moreover, the Commission has laid down guaranteed benchmark standard of performance for the distribution licensees and even worked out compensation to be paid to the affected persons in case of licensees’ failure to meet the standards.
As per the Regulations, the copy of which is available with EXCELSIOR, these standards lay down the guidelines to maintain distribution system parameters within the permissible limits and to ensure efficient, reliable, coordinated and economical system of electricity distribution in both the Union Territories.
The objectives of these performance standards are to ensure that the distribution network performance meets a minimum standard which is essential for consumers’ installation to function properly; to enhance the quality of services to meet acceptable customer service standards in the short term and gradually move towards improved customer service standards in the long term.
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“The Sub-Section 2 of Section 57 of the Electricity Act provides that if a licensee fails to meet the standards, without prejudice to any penalty, which may be imposed or prosecution be initiated, shall be liable to pay such compensation to the affected person as may be determined by the Appropriate Commission”, the Regulations said while quoting the legal provision.
Within next three months, every distribution licensee will published a “manual of practice for handling customer complaints” and each licensee will devise its own processes at call centers, customer care centers, service centers and help desk to handle consumer complaints. Moreover, there will be an IT enabled centralized round the clock toll-free customer care centre at licensee headquarter for registering complaints.
“Each licensee shall furnish to the Commission quarterly report providing information about performance levels achieved by licensee with reference to the guaranteed standards; measures taken to improve the performance and details regarding the cases in which compensation was paid”, read the Regulations.
The Regulations further state: “A power interruption shall include any outage in the distribution system, extending from the distribution substation to the consumer meter, which may be due to the tripping action of protective devices during faults or the failure of distribution lines and/or transformers, and which results in the loss of power supply to one or more consumers”.
However, the application of the standard of performance will remain suspended in case of force majeure events such as war, mutiny, civil commotion, riots, flood, cyclone, lightning, earthquake or other force and strike, lockout, fire affecting licensee’s installations and activities; outages due to generation failure or transmission network failure; outages that are initiated by the National Load Dispatch Centre/ Regional Load Dispatch Centre/ State Load Dispatch Centre during the occurrence of failure of their facilities etc.
As per the Guaranteed Standards of Performance, the response time for the consumer call shall be 3 minutes and any delay in the response time beyond standard time allowed shall be subject to compensation. Similarly, the registration of consumer call after the first response shall be completed in 5 minutes and any delay beyond standard time allowed shall be subject to compensation.
In case of fuse blown out or MCB tripped, maximum time limit for restoration will be within four hours for urban areas, within eight hours for rural areas and within 16 hours for remote areas. In case of service line broken/snapped from the pole, the maximum time limit for restoration is within six hours for urban areas, within 12 hours for rural areas and within 24 hours for remote areas.
The distribution licensees shall ensure replacement of failed transformer within 24 hours in urban areas, within 48 hours in rural areas and within 96 hours in remote areas while as temporary restoration of supply through mobile transformer or another backup source shall be ensured within six hours in urban areas, within 12 hours in rural areas and within 24 hours in remote areas.
Similarly, time-frame has been fixed in case of problem in grid/sub-station, addressing complaints about meters, shifting of meters/service lines, issuance of new connections/additional load.
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