A voltage surge burnt your appliance. What the discom owes you, and how to claim it

It usually goes like this. The power goes off for line work, or a storm takes out a connection. When it comes back the lights flare too bright, something on the switchboard pops, and there is a smell of hot plastic. By morning the TV is dead, the inverter shows an error and the fridge is silent, and half the street is comparing notes on WhatsApp.

This guide covers what went wrong on the wires, what Indian law does and does not promise you, how consumer commissions have decided these cases, and the evidence that separated the households who were paid from those who were not. It is not about the fixed payment for a power cut that ran too long, which has its own page, and it is not legal advice.

What actually happens on the wires

Most urban streets are fed from a distribution transformer as three phases plus a shared neutral: about 230 volts between any phase and the neutral, about 400 between two phases. Houses are spread across the phases to balance the load, and all of them return their current along the same neutral.

Now break that neutral: a corroded joint on a pole, a connector burnt open in summer heat, a conductor snapped in a storm. Houses on different phases are, in effect, wired in series across the 400 volts between phases, and that voltage divides between them according to their load. The house drawing the least current gets the larger share. A home running only a television and a router can see well over 300 volts while the house on the next phase, running a pump, sees its voltage collapse. That is why one family loses its TV while the neighbours only noticed dim lights.

The second way is rarer and more violent: a high-tension conductor touching the low-tension line beneath it. In one Uttarakhand case a storm brought an 11 kV jumper onto an LT line, and appliances burnt in about fifteen houses of one village. Once high-tension voltage reaches house wiring, protection either clears it in a fraction of a second or things burn.

The third is the moment of restoration. A neutral disturbed during line work and not made good brings the broken-neutral problem straight back with the power, and at the same moment every fridge, pump and air conditioner on the transformer restarts at once. A compressor that lost power a minute earlier is still holding high refrigerant pressure; restarting against it, it stalls and draws several times its running current. In a Delhi case decided in 2009, the complaint was exactly this: very high voltage for a few minutes when supply returned after a morning shutdown, and a television that caught fire.

What the law actually promises

Much of what is written online about this cites section 43 of the Electricity Act, 2003. Section 43 is about getting a connection: a discom must supply a premises within one month of receiving an application. It says nothing about the quality of supply or about damaged appliances, and quoting it in a damage claim tells the reader that whoever wrote the letter had not read it.

The section that does apply is 57. It lets your state electricity regulatory commission set standards of performance, and a discom that fails them is “liable to pay such compensation to the person affected as may be determined by the Appropriate Commission”. The Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020 list the time taken to resolve voltage-related complaints among the standards that carry compensation. Read carefully, that is compensation for the discom being slow to fix the voltage: a fixed sum set in your state's schedule. Nothing in the Act or the 2020 Rules puts a price on your television.

We keep the state schedules, where we have been able to read them, on one page: power cut compensation in India. If your state pays for unresolved voltage complaints, claim it. It is a small amount and a different thing from the value of what burnt.

The value of the appliance is a claim for loss, and its usual home is the consumer commission. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 names the “supply of electrical or other energy” as a service, and counts “any act of negligence or omission or commission” that causes the consumer loss as a deficiency. Section 42(8) of the Electricity Act keeps the consumer's other rights alive alongside its own grievance forums. And in U.P. Power Corporation v. Anis Ahmad (2013) the Supreme Court drew the boundary: a consumer commission cannot hear a challenge to a theft or unauthorised-use assessment under sections 126 and 135 to 140, but a complaint of deficient service is within its reach.

The catch is the word negligence. A commission will not order a discom to pay just because your appliance died. You have to show that the supply was abnormal, that the abnormality came from the discom's side of the meter, and that it caused the damage. The cases below were won and lost on exactly that.

How these cases have actually been decided

Four orders, all public, all read in full for this guide. Two went the consumer's way; two did not.

Uttarakhand, 2008. After the storm that dropped an 11 kV jumper onto the LT line, a village household claimed for its burnt appliances. The utility called the storm an act of God and relied on a clause in its supply regulations limiting its liability. The State Commission rejected both: the clause covered supply failures, not negligence, and an LT line that stayed live instead of tripping showed “there was no proper maintenance”. The district forum's award of ₹25,000 with 9% interest stood. What carried it was the utility's own Electrical Inspector's report and the fact that about fifteen houses were hit at once. The award was below the claim, though, because the household could not produce earlier bills or cash memos for everything it listed.

Delhi, 2009. The complaint was very high voltage for a few minutes when supply returned after a morning's repair work, and a television that caught fire and set the room alight. The discom denied any high voltage and suggested an internal short circuit. The Delhi State Commission held it liable for deficiency in service, reasoning that a supplier must keep its equipment checked, and awarded ₹1,00,000 for the loss plus ₹25,000 for harassment and costs: about half the district forum's figure, because the loss had not been properly assessed. An FIR and a fire brigade visit were on record.

Himachal Pradesh, January 2026. A domestic consumer in Solan said a surge had damaged appliances worth ₹31,295, and that his voltmeter had read 400 volts. The district commission awarded him ₹50,000; the State Commission set that aside. He had only his own affidavit: no neighbours' affidavits, nothing else. The board's lineman swore the meter was working and blamed the house wiring, and the board said no one else in the locality had complained. “The onus lies upon the complainant,” the Commission wrote, and he had not discharged it.

National Commission, 2015. A plastics factory in Gujarat blamed a 1998 fire on a voltage surge and claimed about ₹3.9 crore that its insurance had not covered. The National Commission dismissed the case on two grounds. An IIT Delhi expert panel found “no conclusive evidence that a surge occurred”, and the complaint was out of time, because the cause of action arose on the date of the incident.

Side by side, the pattern is plain. The households that won could show the event went beyond their own wiring: an inspector's report, many houses hit at once, a fire on record. The one that lost had a reading and nothing to back it. All four turned on evidence, not on a fine point of law.

The evidence that decides it

Collect this before anything is repaired or thrown away. Most of it is free, and most of it is impossible to get a month later.

• The complaint number. Ring the discom while it is happening and note the number and the time. It is the one record the discom itself keeps that something happened at your address.
• A voltage reading with a time on it. A phone photo of the stabiliser, inverter or plug-in voltmeter display, with its timestamp, beats any later recollection. A reading alone did not win the Himachal case, but it strengthens a case that has something else beside it.
• Photos of the damage, then a technician's written diagnosis. Ask the service engineer to write the cause of failure on the job sheet and sign it; a company report saying the unit failed from over-voltage is far better evidence than your own account. Keep any parts that were replaced.
• Purchase bills and repair invoices. The Uttarakhand household won but was paid less than it claimed for lack of bills. If the bill is lost, a warranty card, a bank or card statement, or a duplicate invoice from the seller is better than nothing.
• Your neighbours, in writing. The piece most often missing, and the one that matters most. A short signed statement from each affected household, with name, address, what was damaged and when, answers the discom's standard defence that the fault was in your own wiring. Several affected families can also file together: the Consumer Protection Act lets one or more consumers with the same interest complain on behalf of all of them, with the commission's permission.
• Anything official. An FIR or fire brigade report if there was a fire. Any written reply, inspection note or fault report from the discom. Any shutdown notice for your area that day.

Power Watch reports sit alongside these, not in place of them. Several reports of voltage fluctuation from the same street within the same hour are useful corroboration that the trouble was the area's and not one house's. They are not sworn evidence, and a commission will read them as background to your documents, not as proof. Report it on Power Watch while it is happening, and screenshot the map for your file.

The claim, step by step

After the discom says no, there are two roads: the grievance forum it is required by law to run, and the consumer commission. Both start the same way.

1. Log a complaint the same day. Insist on a complaint number, and note when you called and what you were told.
2. Photograph, then get a diagnosis. Before any repair: photos, readings, and a technician's written cause of failure.
3. Write to your sub-division office. Address it to the Assistant Engineer in charge of your sub-division: consumer number, complaint number, date and time, what happened, what was damaged and the repair or replacement cost, with copies of your evidence. Ask for compensation and a written reply. Get a stamped acknowledgement, or send it by email or registered post so the date is on record.
4. Follow up once, in writing. If there is no reply in about a month, send one reminder quoting your first letter. A written refusal is useful too: it shows you what the discom's defence will be.
5. Choose your forum. For the fixed standards-of-performance amount, and for getting a recurring fault fixed, go to the CGRF and then the Electricity Ombudsman. For the value of the appliance, the District Consumer Commission is usually the realistic forum. Pick one road for the same grievance.
6. Mind the two-year clock. A consumer complaint has to be filed within two years of the incident. A commission can excuse a delay for sufficient cause, but do not plan on it.

The CGRF is free, and under the 2020 Rules it should normally decide a grievance within 30 days and never later than 45, with the Electricity Ombudsman appointed by your state commission above it. The limit is what it can award. Kerala's 2023 forum regulations, for example, tie the forum's compensation to the amounts “as specified by the Commission in the Standards of Performance Regulations” and rule out “indirect, consequential, incidental, punitive, or exemplary damages”. Rules differ by state, so read yours, but do not expect a CGRF to price a burnt refrigerator. Kerala's Ombudsman will also turn away a grievance already pending before a court or other authority, which is another reason to pick one road at the start.

The District Consumer Commission hears complaints up to a value of ₹50 lakh, which covers any household claim. You can file where you live rather than where the discom has its office, and you can file online through the government's e-Jagriti portal; the fee is nil at the lowest slab, up to ₹5 lakh. Expect the discom to blame your wiring, and expect the case to take months rather than weeks. The evidence in the last section is what answers the first.

If you have not complained at all yet, start with how to file a power cut complaint that gets a response. The same rules about numbers, times and writing apply.

What actually protects an appliance

The two devices most homes already have do not protect against any of this. An MCB trips on overcurrent: too much current, as in a short circuit or an overload. An RCCB trips when current leaks to earth, which is what saves a person touching a faulty appliance. Neither notices that the voltage has gone to 350.

What does notice is over-voltage protection. Many stabilisers cut their output when the input leaves their range; check that yours has a high-voltage cut-off rather than assuming it does. Plug-in voltage protectors sold for fridges and televisions disconnect when the voltage leaves a set band and reconnect after a delay, and that delay also saves a compressor from a hot restart. An electrician can fit a whole-house over- and under-voltage relay at the distribution board.

Surge protectors, from the spike guard on your desk to a surge protective device at the board, are built for spikes that last microseconds: switching transients, a nearby lightning strike. They are worth having for electronics. But a broken neutral is not a spike. It is a sustained over-voltage, and a spike guard may simply fail along with whatever is plugged into it.

Then the habits, which cost nothing. When the power goes, switch off the AC, fridge, geyser and pump at the wall. When it returns, wait a few minutes and watch the lights and the stabiliser display; if either looks wrong, leave everything off and ring the discom. Switch heavy appliances back on one at a time. And have a wireman tighten the neutral at your meter board once a year. It is the one cause on this page that is yours to fix.

If your problem is chronic low voltage rather than a sudden surge, the mechanism and the remedy are different, and we cover them in low voltage is a fault, not weak power.

Questions people actually ask