Meralco raises electricity rate anew

Consumers will have to pay more for their electricity consumption in April as Manila Electric Co. implements a P0.225-per-kilowatt hour (kWh) increase in its rate.

This brings Meralco’s overall rate in April to P10.55 per kWh from P10.32 per kWh in March.

This will translate to an increase of P45 in the electricity bill of a residential customer consuming 200 kWh.

Meralco said the rate hike in April was due mainly to the P0.1773-hike in generation charge.

From P5.2962 per kWh in March, generation charge rose to P5.4735 per kWh.

For March, Meralco said electricity rate should have increased by P0.97 per kWh. However, Meralco said it implemented an increase of only P0.85 per kWh to minimize the impact of the rate adjustment on consumers.

The balance will be reflected in Meralco customers’ April billing.

Contributing to the generation charge increase, according to Meralco, were the higher charges of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), which were jacked up by P1.6441 per kWH due to tighter power supply in the Luzon grid.

With warmer temperatures, the demand for power in the grid increased by about 357 megawatts, Meralco said in a statement.

In February, National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) placed Luzon in yellow alert due to forced plant outages and restrictions in the supply of natural gas from Malampaya that affected the output of several power plants.

Meralco said the higher WESM charges were partly offset by a P0.1412 per kWh decline in the cost of power from independent power producers (IPP) brought about by improved average plant dispatch. The share of IPP purchases to Meralco’s total requirement was 29 percent.

It said its distribution, supply and metering charges have remained unchanged for the last 33 months. Meralco stressed it was not earning from pass-through charges, such as generation and transmission charges. Payment for generation charge goes to power suppliers while payment for transmission goes to NGCP. —ROY STEPHEN C. CANIVEL