Charles Assisi for Times News Network

Mumbai, Apr 11: The chances of Mumbai scraping through this summer without power cuts seem slim. Whether it eventually does or does not, Mumbaikars can take pride in a painful statistic. The power they consume is now easily the most expensive in the world. Your local neighbourhood grocer, the cyber cafe owner and the businessman trying to build something of global scale out of the city are now billed roughly twice what a consumer would pay in Japan and five times what consumers would pay in the US, France or China.

And if yours is the kind of home that uses up to 500 units or more of electricity a month, you end up paying more than twice what the Chinese do and one-and-a-half times what the American does. Here’s how the math works.

At current prices, any business that operates in the city pays close to Rs 11.50 for each unit of electricity that it consumes. In dollar terms, that works out to 26 cents (assuming an exchange rate of Rs 44 to the dollar). Only a Japanese business pays anything close to that at 13 cents,or roughly Rs 5.72. The Americans, French and Chinese pay just a little over Rs 2 for each unit of electricity they consume to power their businesses.

If you are a home user, power may come cheaper, but only marginally so. Assume for a moment that you run a 1.5 tonne air conditioner at home for eight hours each night—you’ll end up consuming about 380 units each month. Add to this the other assorted appliances that are part of urban life and you easily end up using in excess of 500 units each month.

If you do average that number, the power company will bill you at Rs 6.50 for each unit consumed—in dollar terms, close to 15 cents. Juxtapose this number with the 6.9 cents it costs in China, 9.6 cents in the US and the 13-odd cents you pay in France, and you get a sense of the high-cost economy you live in. Of course, you’d still be better off than the Japanese and most people in Europe who pay in the region of 19 cents for the power they consume at home.

If yours is an average home that uses something like 300 units of electricity a month, you’d be billed at Rs 4.50 per unit—or a little over 10 cents per unit.