Meralco rates up this month

MANILA, Philippines - Customers of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) will see their electricity bills go up slightly this month as the generation charge rose for the second consecutive month.

In a statement, Meralco said the overall rate for residential customers is up by P0.055 per kilowatt-hour, from P8.55 per kwh in November to P8.605 per kwh this month.

A typical household consuming 200 kwh will see its electricity bill go up by P11 this month compared to the bill in November.

Despite the increase in this month’s rate, Meralco said the power prices for households will end the year 13 percent or P1.260 per kwh lower than the P9.865 per kwh rate in December 2014.

The power distributor also noted that this month’s overall rate is the fourth lowest since January 2010.

Other bill components also rose for the month. Transmission charge registered an increase of P0.007 per kwh due to the higher ancillary service charges, while taxes and other charges (system loss and subsidies) also recorded a combined increase of P0.002 per kwh.

For the increase in the December overall rates, Meralco said this was primarily due to the generation charge, which increased by P0.046 per kwh from last month.

Charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) went up by P0.535 per kwh due to the lower generation from hydro plants and the higher extent of forced outages in November compared to October.

Plants under the Power Supply Agreements (PSAs) also registered a slight increase of P0.009 per kwh due to lower dispatch of SEM Calaca and the increase in fuel cost of Ilijan driven by the weakening of the peso against the dollar.

On the other hand, the average rate of the plants under the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) decreased by P0.005 per kwh, driven by the higher dispatch of Sta. Rita as no outages were observed in November.

The share of PSAs, IPPs and WESM to Meralco’s total power requirements stood at 49.9 percent, 44.4 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively.