Power bills: DISCOs want Rs 1.73 a unit more in October, hearing on 29 September

Your October electricity bill has a number waiting in it. The Central Power Purchasing Agency has asked the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority for a fuel charges adjustment (FCA) of Rs 1.7267 per unit for August 2026. NEPRA hears the petition on 29 September. If it is approved, it lands on October bills.

This is the third adjustment in a row. On 5 September NEPRA approved Rs 2.058 per unit for July, which you paid in September bills and which moved about Rs 33 billion. At the same hearing it approved a quarterly tariff adjustment of 52 paisa per unit, spread over September, October and November, worth about another Rs 12.7 billion. So October already has the quarterly piece in it before the new FCA is decided.

What Rs 1.73 a unit costs you

The FCA is charged on units consumed, then General Sales Tax is charged on top. At the full Rs 1.7267 asked for, at 18 per cent GST:

• 100 units: Rs 172.67, about Rs 204 with GST
• 200 units: Rs 345.34, about Rs 408 with GST
• 300 units: Rs 518.01, about Rs 611 with GST
• 500 units: Rs 863.35, about Rs 1,019 with GST
• 700 units: Rs 1,208.69, about Rs 1,426 with GST

Add the 52 paisa quarterly adjustment and a 300-unit household is looking at roughly Rs 795 with GST from the two together, if NEPRA grants the FCA in full.

Put your own units into our electricity bill calculator to see where you land, and the AC running cost calculator if the summer load is what pushed you up a slab.

Who does not pay it

When NEPRA notified the September adjustments it excluded lifeline consumers, electric vehicle charging stations and prepaid consumers. Consumers on the incremental consumption package were additionally excluded from the quarterly adjustment. The same exclusions have applied to recent FCA notifications, though the final decision on this petition will set its own terms.

K-Electric consumers are not covered by this petition at all. K-Electric files its own fuel charges adjustments with NEPRA separately.

Why the number is this big

The gap is fuel. Arif Habib Limited puts August generation at 14,943 GWh, up 5.1 per cent on the 14,218 GWh of August 2025, and down about 1 per cent on July's 15,122 GWh. The cost of the fuel burned to make it was Rs 10.01 per unit, up 38 per cent from Rs 7.27 a year earlier, though down 7 per cent from July's Rs 10.75.

The CPPA petition puts August generation cost at Rs 149.596 billion and argues the difference between the reference fuel cost of Rs 7.1 per unit built into tariffs and the roughly Rs 8.8 per unit actually incurred should pass to consumers. That gap, not the units you used, is what the FCA collects.

The fuel mix

August ran on hydel 38 per cent, coal 27 per cent, nuclear 10 per cent, gas 9 per cent, RLNG 7 per cent, wind 6 per cent and solar 1 per cent. Hydel and nuclear are cheap; coal and RLNG are what move the bill. With the monsoon ending, the hydel share falls through autumn, which is why the September and October adjustments are worth watching.

The global picture is helping a little. Brent has fallen for four straight sessions as talks on reopening crude flows progressed, and our petrol price page tracks the local pass-through, which OGRA decides separately.

What to do

Nothing is final until 29 September, and NEPRA regularly approves less than what is asked for. In July the CPPA sought Rs 1.20 for June and got Re 0.7503.

If you are close to a slab boundary, this is the month to watch the meter: crossing from one slab to the next costs more than the FCA does. Solar owners on net metering pay the FCA only on units drawn from the grid, so a bigger export month softens it.