At least since 2012, there has been a fair amount of legal uncertainty on the ambit of powers of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) and the State Electricity Regulatory Commissions (SERCs) under the provisions of the Electricity Act, 2003 (the 2003 Act) to award what came to be known as a “compensatory tariff” in case of tariff-based competitively bid power generating projects.

The issue took centre stage in 2011-12 with the promulgation of regulations by Indonesia, which barred export of coal from that country below a certain benchmark price. A number of Indian power project developers had submitted aggressive tariff bids during 2006-2009 relying on the import of relatively cheaper coal from Indonesia to India to fuel their power projects.Continue Reading SC Clarifies the Scope of Regulatory Power under Section 79 (1) of Electricity Act, 2003