Maharashtra has a substantial agricultural load from around 4.8 million agriculture consumers, accounting for almost 30 per cent of electricity consumption.
“That load has now moved to the agriculture business,” said Chandra, adding that the demerger also ensured that there was no cross-subsidy burden on industrial and other consumers from agricultural consumers.
“The cost of supply for agriculture is higher while the tariff determined by the regulator is lower. The resulting subsidy burden was shared by industrial, commercial and other residential consumers,” he said.
The state has about 32.6 million consumers.
“The residual company is expected to have much better parameters from a recovery perspective,” he added.
Around 55 per cent of the discom’s revenue comes from industrial consumers, where recovery is almost 100 per cent, he said.
The main concern now is residential consumers, who have some arrears. “That is improving with the deployment of smart meters. We now have an auto-disconnection facility, which has helped improve collection over the last few months,” Chandra said.
On the outstanding debt as of March 2025, Chandra said the government had taken over around ₹33,000 crore and the company was left with nearly ₹57,000 crore of sustainable debt now. “We have done long-term restructuring by converting short-term loans into long-term loans. We are comfortable servicing this debt, and our debt-service coverage ratio is also comfortable at 1.0 in FY26. It was around 0.6 in FY25,” he said.
The company also had dues of ₹96,000 crore as in March 2025, primarily from the agricultural sector. A portion has been addressed through the debt taken over by the government, while the remaining dues are being transferred to the holding company, Chandra noted, adding that the new company would not be burdened by these recovery dues.
It has also taken several steps as part of financial restructuring to address its accumulated losses. The losses were around ₹35,000 crore earlier, he said.
Over the past three years, the company has moved from a loss of around ₹5,000 crore to a profit of ₹487 crore in FY25, and then to a bigger profit of ₹1,234 crore in FY26.
Aggregate technical and commercial losses have also declined to 13.91 per cent in FY26 from 18.09 per cent in FY25.
“Recoveries have improved, and revenue collection is increasing because of growth in overall consumption,” he said.
MSEDCL has prepared a resource adequacy plan, considering the growth expected from data centres, electric vehicles, green hydrogen and similar initiatives, and projected an annual growth rate of 6.2-6.5 per cent in power demand. “Accordingly, we have projected demand for the next 10 years and undertaken procurement. We have signed PPAs of almost 48,000 megawatts (Mw) over the last three years. These projects will be commissioned by 2030. Therefore, we should be able to meet the projected demand,” Chandra said.
This year in May, Maharashtra recorded its highest-ever peak demand of 32,317 Mw. It will continue to grow, and the company’s revenue growth should also increase correspondingly, he added.
Chandra said the share of renewable energy in power demand in the state was expected to increase from around 15 per cent at present to over 50 per cent by 2030.
The discom has installed over 6,700 Mw of rooftop solar capacity, and by 2030 it is expected to increase to 10,000-12,000 Mw.
“Around 750,000 consumers are benefiting from the scheme and are receiving lower electricity bills,” he said, adding that it is paying ₹2.89 per unit for the excess energy the consumers generate and feed into the grid.
Under its renewable-energy policy, published in March this year, it also expects rooftop solar and other consumers to have some form of storage facility.
“Installations above 100 kW will essentially have to go for battery storage along with the rooftop solar system,” he said.
It has set a target of 100 GWh of storage and 100 GW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2035.
The discom has installed more than 13 million smart meters out of 24.1 million consumers. “They can also use this data to reduce their electricity bills through demand-side measures, such as shifting some consumption from peak hours to non-peak hours,” he said.
