Lower electricity bills seen this month

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Customers of Manila Electric Co. can expect their power bills to go down this month as electricity rates fell by a total of 58 centavos per kilowatt-hour in September.

This means that households consuming 200kWh in a month will see a reduction of P115.50 in their power bills, while those who consume 300 kWh will pay P173.25 less this month, data from Meralco showed.

Households consuming 400 kWh and 500 kWh monthly can expect their power bills to go down by P231 and P288.75, respectively.

Meralco explained in a statement issued Monday that this decline can be attributed largely to a decrease in generation charge—said to be at its lowest level so far this year with a 44-centavo per kWh reduction to P5.19 per kWh. Transmission and other charges also went down this month.

According to the power distributor, improved availability of power from generating plants drove the generation charge down, as less forced outages were registered during the August supply month. This was in contrast to the July supply month when the Luzon Grid suffered from generation deficiency.

Given the improved reliability of power plants, the average rates charged by suppliers who have power supply agreements with the utility firm fell by 27 centavos while the cost of power sourced from the so-called independent power producers (IPPs) likewise went down by 6 centavos per kWh, Meralco said. The cost of power sourced from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market also fell significantly by P5.34 per kWh, excluding adjustments from prior periods and line rentals.

For the August supply month, Meralco sourced 52 percent of its requirements from the PSAs; 47 percent from the IPPs; and only 1 percent from the WESM.

Contributing also to the overall downward adjustment in the power bills was the 4 centavo per kWh decrease in transmission charge, which was due to lower ancillary charges.

There was also a cumulative decrease of 2 centavos per kWh in subsidies and the system loss charge.

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