Meralco hikes electricity rates by 24.5¢/kWh

7:56 am | Saturday, November 10th, 2012

MANILA, Philippines—Expect higher electricity bills this month.

Power distributor Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) will raise power rates by a total of 24.5 centavos per kilowatt-hour this month to reflect the increases in the generation, transmission and system loss charges.

Thus, households consuming 100 kWh every month can expect an increase of P17.77 in their monthly power bills while those using up 200 kWh and 300 kWh will have to pay an additional P47.40 and P71.10, respectively, according to Lawrence S. Fernandez, assistant vice president and head of utility economics of Meralco.

Households consuming 400 kWh monthly will have to shell out another P94.80 for their November power bills, Fernandez said on Friday.

In a statement, Meralco explained that of the total increase of 24.5 centavos per kWh, 13.5 centavos per kWh represented the increase in generation charge, 9 centavos from the hike in transmission charges and 2 centavos from a higher system loss charge.

The hike in the generation charge to P5.63 per kWh can be attributed to the increases in the cost of electricity bought from the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM), whose rates rose by P2.30 per kWh, and from state-run National Power Corp. (Napocor), which registered a 15-centavo-per-kWh rise in its rates.

“The increase in the WESM was partly due to the reliance on more expensive, oil-fired plants to compensate for the unavailability of some coal and gas fired power plants that were on outage and a lower output from hydroelectric power plants. The higher WESM and Napocor charges were partially offset by a reduction in prices from independent power producers (IPPs), which went down by 21 centavos per kWh,” Meralco explained.

These IPPs were Quezon Power Philippines Ltd.’s coal-fed facility and the 1,000-megawatt Sta. Rita, the 500-MW San Lorenzo natural gas-fired plants that are owned by the Lopez-led First Gas Holdings. Another power source for Meralco is Consunji-led SEM Calaca, which owns and operates a 600-MW coal facility in Batangas.

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Tags: Consumer Issues , electric bills , electricity , Meralco , napocor

http://profile.yahoo.com/UZMYIL5FXLVIHRZXBQGONZS6U4 Jhune

System loss covered what?
1. Ang mga ninanakaw ng mga magnanakaw ng kuryente ang tinatawag na jumper.
2. Ang nagkikiskisang kable ng meralco na hindi nila inaayos.
3. Overload na transformer maging ang transmission lines ng meralco na hindi naman nila iaayos.
4. Ang mga meralco lighting post double compensation iyan ng meralco sa mga taga maynila. Nagbabayad si chairman o kaya si mayor ng monthly bill tapos nagbabayad naman ang customer ng meralco sa system loss.
5. Ang pinakamasa dito, kapag nahuli ng miralco ang magnanakaw mayroong pinalty (halagang pera) ibinabawas kaya itong pinalting ito sa system loss?
Wadav

hay naku.. walang katapusan rate increased yan! compared to Mindanao, we are still having lower rates because we are using renewables. if only people will realize the value of renewable energy, conventional power staions will have no chance. Australia had used a lot of solar energy that some coal power stations are being shutdown because of increased uptake in solar power installation on households. sana gayahin din natin.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NGNJN677R6HABULRKUCIK4XEOE Jack Jones

nasaan na yung balita na may refund. kinalabasan increase rate pala. niloloko na tayo palagi ng meralco ah. kawawa naman tayong maliliit ang kita. kaliwat kanan na lang pang aabuso inaabot. HIGHEST ELECTRICITY RATE IN ASIA = PHILIPPINES….PWEEEE !

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FT2PSQ755VIUOREJDJLMCR5A3M delbz

nilabas na sa newspaper ang refund.

mga senador walang paki at manhid…malinaw na monoply at economic sabotage ..pero sabagay asa pa tayo eh P200 million ang pork barrel mga yan…. out of touch mga yan

mr dt

WE SELL residential POWER REDUCTION DEVICE IN PHILIPPINES

SabahPhilippines at gmail com
mr dt

maybe ERB COMMISSIONERS ARE GETTING SECRET DOLLARS PESO DEPOSIT FROM MERALCO AS KICK BACK — ATTENTION BETTER CHECK THOSE ERB COMMISSIONER

http://twitter.com/alfs_alfs Pons Corpuz

ERC

arnel alonzo

MERALCO are always looking the other side how they could survive! According to them they are always loosing. This age is entirely too long for them to manipulate the entire country a win win situation. What we need is competition! Let the gov’t should allowed to enter other investor to invest electricity in our country. Charges are too high for ordinary Juan Dela Cruz earning average low income.

mr dt

they are not losing — they just reported record net income a few weeks ago – i better look for that report again or you can check with philippine sec filing
http://twitter.com/alfs_alfs Pons Corpuz

All businesses has an intention of making a profit. Kahit sa simpleng sari-sari store pa man iyan. Why would you invest in the first place kung magpapalugi ka rin lang?

Cal_Reznick

Is the Administration doing anything to prevent this price hike? Price of gas is going up, price public transpo is going up, now cost of power is going up?? Is the Administration trying to make the Philippine much poorer??

robrano

Price of gas is going up? And at the same time the oil was going down and down. There is a simple trick: When oil goes up, soonest the fuel and LPG pice follows “because of low stocks” of the cheaper products. But when oil goes down, local prices follow very slow “because of huge stocks” of the expensive products, or crude oil if refineries are concerned.
And the miracle is, that the local oil firms make losses everywhere but their mother cmpanies report historic high profits at the end of a business year. The reason: The local companies get their oil or fuel overpriced from the mother company, so that they can show losses in every country while the profit goes to the main office which is out of any control of local governments.

Cal_Reznick

Very interesting point.

Its just difficult for the everyday filipino when it seems earnings are low and unemployment is high but yet the cost of living keep going up.

Shouldn’t the Administration do something about all this??

http://profile.yahoo.com/SHJZR76LIZ3P6EC3DHL5RKXKAU Sargo

sige magtaas pa sana naman 5 pesos per kw/hr ang itaas! Maunlad na ang Pilipinas diba ang taas nga ng growth sabi ni Noy noy, taas lang ng taas kaya ng Pilipino yan ang yayaman naman pala ng tao sa Pilipinas ngayon.
robrano

Always they find reasons to increase. Problems at power plants just mean there is no professional maintenance.
Why this does hardly happen to European plants? Go Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France etc., their plants work often for a century already. But there, maintenance means permanent working to avoid outage and repair. In RP, maintenance means doing nothing and just wait until repair is needed. Which of course is more expensive.
And too, the foreign companies have often less total employees than RP companies have presidents, vice presidents, directors and vice directors, managers and assistant managers. There are the big expenses which make RP power one of the most expensive.
And there are the owners paying their loans from their profit, not the consumer who has nothing to do with the company. And there are no laws which guarantees a 12% profit, there it is up to the business to work well for having a profit. And they are happy with 3, 4, 5% profit, RP business wants 20…30% and more

foreignerph

Exactly. If Meralco likes more profit (a honorable goal), they should fire 29 of their 30 useless (vice-) managers that don’t even know how to count to 10. That’s true capitalism : cut cost and useless personnel, and improve quality. Managers don’t repair poles and don’t cut wires. In the Phils, they just sit there on a clean desk dreaming of their next Mitsubishi Strada and feeling very important while the people that actually do the work have to squat to feed their families.

Meralco hikes electricity rates by 24.5¢/kWh

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