17 , October , 2023
In a major development, the Haryana government has introduced a major policy change that corrects a past decision, wherein the government will no longer ask developers to construct power substations or submit bank guarantees for it. The substations will be constructed by discoms, the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission (HERC) has notified. The developer will pay for the sanctioned load of a condominium or township and will have to provide free land to the discom for the substation.
The officials informed that depending on the sanctioned load, the move will reduce the cost for developing electrical infrastructure for builders from 20% to 72%. Due to delays in construction of substations by developers, most colonies and group housing societies developed by private realtors are facing frequent outages and disruptions in power supply, even though there is adequate supply at the grid level. In the past few years, MCG took over several private colonies, but electrical infrastructure wasn't taken over by DHBVN as substations hadn’t been built.
Developers have been claiming that they have already paid external development charges to the government and shouldn’t have to construct substations too.
“The new notification will bring more clarity and will be beneficial to all”, said Praveen Jain, a member of the National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO).
Earlier, developers with colonies having a sanctioned load of 6 MVA to 20 MVA had to spend around Rs 7.5 crore to Rs 8.5 crore for a substation. Now, they will have to pay just Rs 2 crore to Rs 6.8 crore.
“According to the new HERC notification, which was issued on Saturday, developers will pay only for the sanctioned load. Their expenditure will be considerably reduced as they aren’t required to construct substations now,” a senior discom official stated.
The size of the land required for substations has been reduced too. ‘Land is very costly in the city. The reduction in size will further benefit developers,” the official added. Besides, developers of small residential societies having a sanctioned load of up to 5 MVA won’t need to provide land for a substation. They will have to just pay for the electricity connection and required load. Provisions have also been made for individual connections in plotted colonies. Earlier, the discom was supplying single-point connections to the developer, who provided branched connections to individual house owners. The notification also said consumers won’t be required to pay service connection charges.
New consumers must pay a service charge of Rs 500 per kW for single-phase supply and Rs 1000 per kW for three-phase supply. “The new changes in the rules will benefit the consumers,” a senior official from HERC quoted.
