Union Government on December 21, 2020 for the first time lays down Rights to the Electricity Consumers through “Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020”.
- Union Ministry of Power promulgated rules laying down the rights of power consumers in the country.
- Objective: These rules shall empower the consumers of electricity and added that these Rules emanate from the conviction that the power systems exist to serve the consumers and the consumers have rights to get the reliable services and quality electricity.
Rights and Obligations
- It is the duty of every distribution licensee to supply electricity on request made by an owner or occupier of any premises in line with the provisions of Act.
- It is the right of consumer to have minimum standards of service for supply of electricity from the distribution licensee.
Release of new connection and modification in existing connection.
- Maximum time period of 7 days in metro cities and 15 days in other municipal areas and 30 days in rural areas identified to provide new connection and modify an existing connection.
Metering
- No connection shall be given without a meter
- Meter shall be the smart pre-payment meter or pre-payment meter.
- Provision of Testing of meters
- Provisions for replacement of defective or burnt or stolen meters specified
Billing and payment
- Consumer shall have the option to pay bills online or offline.
- Provision for advance payment of bills
Reliability of supply
- The distribution licensee shall supply 24×7 power to all consumers. However, the Commission may specify lower hours of supply for some categories of consumers like agriculture.
- The distribution licensee shall put in place a mechanism, preferably with automated tools to the extent possible, for monitoring and restoring outages.
Consumer as prosumer
- While the prosumers will maintain consumer status and have the same rights as the general consumer, they will also have right to set up Renewable Energy (RE) generation unit including roof top solar photovoltaic (PV) systems – either by himself or through a service provider.
Compensation mechanism
- Compensation amount to be paid to the consumers by the distribution licensees for violation of standards of performance.
- Automatic compensation shall be paid to consumers for which parameters on standards of performance can be monitored remotely.
