Hyderabad: Consumers seeking domestic electricity connections, especially in areas where there is no power infrastructure as well as those in residential colonies on the outskirts, will now be spared from spending lakhs of rupees.The Telangana State Electricity Regulatory Commission (TGERC), in a huge relief to consumers, has fixed charges for erecting power infrastructure and distribution, especially in city outskirts. On Wednesday, the TGERC issued a gazette notification, TGERC (licence duty for supply of electricity on request), second amendment regulation 2026, announcing these charges.Until now, Telangana discoms collected charges from consumers for distribution of transformers, poles and other infrastructure for providing electricity from the main lines, depending on the distance if there was no existing network. For those in new residential colonies, the amount some times ran into lakhs of rupees, with agriculture consumers even being asked to pay for poles and transformers.The TGERC said that discoms will now collect only 500 as a fixed amount for an electricity connection up to 1 kW. For connections with electricity load between 1 kW and 5 kW, the amount will be 500 plus 600 per kW. These charges will go up to 2,900 plus 1,500 per kW for connections with a load of 5 kW and 20 kW. Charges per kW would be 10,000 per kW if the connection exceeds 20 kW.For non-domestic connections up to a 1 kW power load connection, the fixed amount would be 1,000, and 1,000 plus 2,000 per kW if the connection is between 1 kW and 5 kW. For connections between 5 kW and 20 kW, the charges will be 5,800 as fixed charges and 2,000 per kW as additional charges. For agriculture connections, discoms can collect up to a maximum of 1,000 per kW from consumers.“For apartments, commercial complexes, multi-storey buildings, combined contract load should be considered for levying service charges,” the TGERC said. It also made it clear that discoms are responsible for supply, erection and maintenance of distribution transformers to all consumers who paid the charges, and they should not charge any transformer cost.However, in the case of commercial complexes, apartments and multi-storey buildings, they can recover the cost of transformers where a dedicated transformer is provided to them, and the discoms are not entitled to any development charges additionally, the TGERC said.
