Chennai: Restaurants in the city are unhappy over the state govt’s announcement of a 2 subsidy on excess power consumption to tide over the LPG crisis, stating that switching to electric itself is a huge investment. They added that doing away with peak-hour electricity consumption charges or fixed charges would come as a real relief.Chennai hotels association president M Ravi said commercial induction stove ranges start from 1 lakh for a low capacity of 5kW. “There are stoves with a capacity up to 50kW, and they are not easily available. It will take time to switch to electric completely, and it requires huge investment. So, a 2 subsidy on the excess power consumption will not help the restaurants much,” he said. Ravi said that the state should consider waiving the peak-hour power consumption charges, if not a 2 subsidy on the entire consumption.Big restaurants with high-tension electricity services are levied electricity tariffs under the miscellaneous category, while smaller restaurants, eateries, cloud kitchens and tea shops with low-tension connections are charged under the commercial category. High-tension consumers pay consumption charges of 9.40 per unit, apart from a fixed charge of 608 per kW of connected load. Meanwhile, low-tension consumers pay 6.45 to 10.45 per unit depending upon their consumption, and the fixed charges vary from 220 to 664 per kW for the total connected load.They also pay peak-hour consumption charges of 25% more than regular consumption between 6am and 10am, and 6pm and 10pm. “We cannot charge differently for food cooked during peak and non-peak hours. At least, hotels and restaurants should be spared from such tariffs,” he said.Meanwhile, tea shop owners feel the 2 subsidy would be implemented at all in reality. Anandan T, President of Chennai Perunagara tea shop owners association, said the officers on the field would make undue demands and seek irrelevant documents to avail the benefit. “When common services in apartments are levied as much as commercial services, how will the govt give subsidies to commercial services?” he asked.However, TNPDCL officials said that all the properly classified services will automatically be eligible for the subsidy, and instructions were given to be lenient on unclassified consumers. A senior official requesting anonymity over the model code of conduct said that the relief is not final, as it is an emergency situation like Covid but without the risk of infection. “If the situation gets worse, more relief will be considered to aid the affected,” said the official. Meanwhile, prominent cafes in the city have dropped pizza from their menus, as pizza ovens are mostly fuelled by LPG. But some have converted their gas ovens to brick ovens, which not only saves LPG, but brings out a smoky flavour to the pizzas, a favourite of customers.
