The BESCOM Electricity Bill Conundrum
If you live in Bengaluru and received a huge bill this month, read on to undersand why!
There are 2 reasons for that huge bill you received!
One - This is a bill for 2 months, March and April 2020, combined .
Two - Most probably you have been using more electricity since you and your family have been locked up in your house. (in my case, the units went up by 35%)
What BESCOM did was, for the month of March 2020, they gave a bill based on the average consumption. (since they couldn't take a reading due to the lockdown)
By the end of April 2020, they took the actual readings and calculated the total bill amount for the months of both March and April combined.
And then they adjusted the amount from the previous March bill (based on average consumption) against the total. This should show up as a deduction in your April bill.
And then they adjusted the amount from the previous March bill (based on average consumption) against the total. This should show up as a deduction in your April bill.
Now how does BESCOM calculate your electricity bill?
There are 2 components in your electricty bill.
One is the fixed component, which depends on the sanctioned load. sanctioned load is expressed in KiloWatt or KW. In my case it is 5KW
The fixed component is the amount you'll have to pay even if you don't use any electricity at all.
The second component is the energy charges which is a variable component that depends on how much electricity you consume.
The electricity consumption is expressed in units. The units consumed is the difference between your meter reading at the end of the month and the reading at the start of the month. Each unit corresponds to 1Kilo Watt Hour (KWh) consumption.
The energy charges are calculated using a slab wise calculation as follows.
I have put together a nifty tool which lets you do this calculation.
You can download the tool at the following link. LINK : BESCOM Electricity Bill Calculator
Hope this puts to rest your queries. If you still think you received a wrong bill, feel free to get in touch with your BESCOM sub-section office.
PS: The April 2020 bill provides double the units in each slab to account for the 2 months for which the bill is generated.
Pretty smart work by the BESCOM to incorporate this change at such short notice.
But sadly it wasn't communicated in advance and thus led to a lot of confusion.
But sadly it wasn't communicated in advance and thus led to a lot of confusion.
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