Power bills: CPPA asks for Rs 1.73 a unit more, hearing set for 29 September

The Central Power Purchasing Agency has asked the regulator to let distribution companies charge Rs 1.73 more per unit on the next round of bills. It is the fuel charges adjustment for August 2026. NEPRA will hold the public hearing on 29 September.

Nothing is charged until NEPRA notifies it. The authority can approve the figure, cut it, or refuse it. On past form it usually approves most of what is asked.

What it adds to your bill

The fuel charges adjustment is a flat amount on every unit you consumed, and general sales tax at 18 percent applies on top of it. So the number on your bill is higher than Rs 1.73 a unit.

Work out your own total on our electricity bill calculator, or check what you are being billed now on the electricity bill page.

Who is excluded

Four categories do not pay this adjustment:

• Lifeline consumers
• Electric vehicle charging stations
• Prepaid consumers who opted for the prepaid tariff
• Consumers billed under incremental consumption packages

Everyone else on a distribution company, and K-Electric customers in Karachi, pays it.

Why the number is Rs 1.73

In August the distribution companies took 14.464 billion units at an average fuel cost of Rs 8.82 a unit. The tariff already builds in a reference fuel cost. The gap between what fuel actually cost and that reference figure is what the adjustment collects, and this month the gap is Rs 1.73.

The cost is driven by the generation mix. Hydropower supplied 37.84 percent of the month's electricity and costs almost nothing per unit. Coal was 26.47 percent. The expensive end is small but it sets the marginal price:

Two fuels costing over Rs 45 a unit account for barely a tenth of generation, and they are the reason a monthly adjustment exists at all.

This is not the only adjustment

A bill carries three separate moving parts, and readers often confuse them:

• Fuel charges adjustment: monthly, based on the previous month's actual fuel costs. This is the Rs 1.73.
• Quarterly tariff adjustment: capacity payments, transmission charges and the rest, reset every three months.
• Base tariff: set annually in the tariff determination.

An FCA of Rs 1.73 can land in the same bill as a quarterly adjustment, which is how a bill jumps by more than one announcement would suggest.

What to do before the hearing

NEPRA hearings are public and written comments are accepted before the date. The notice and the CPPA petition are posted on the NEPRA site. If you want to object, the window is now, not after the notification.

If the bill is the problem rather than the tariff, check the electricity bill calculator against your meter reading first. Billing errors on estimated readings are common and are corrected by the distribution company, not the regulator.