Meralco cuts rates for 2nd month in a row

Manila Electric Co.’s (Meralco) customers will see lower charges for the second month in a row in June, this time with a reduction of 19.48 centavos per kilowatt-hour, amid lower prices at the spot market.

In a statement, Meralco said this month’s price cut would mean a decrease in the bill of about P39 for a typical residential customer that consumes 200 kwh a month.

The power distributor said that for the June billing period, its overall charge went down to P10.0918 per kwh from P10.2866 per kwh in the May billing.

The generation charge alone went down by 13.54 centavos per kwh to P5.4158 per kwh from P5.5508 per per kwh previously.

Meralco said there was a decrease of 31 centavos per kwh in the cost of electricity from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market—which provided 9 percent of Meralco’s supply —despite the continued supply tightness in the Luzon grid.

“While the number of days on ‘red alert’ as declared by National Grid Corp. of the Philippines decreased from seven last month to two in May, the number of days on ‘yellow alert’ increased from seven in April to 13 this month due to higher demand for power,” the company said.

Yellow means the reserve generating capacity is insufficient if power plants went on unplanned or forced outage. Red means electricity demand is likely to exceed available capacity.

In the meantime, the cost of power from independent power producers (IPPs) and power supply agreements (PSAs) increased by 5.56 centavos per kwh and 7.17 centavos per kwh, respectively.

This was partly due to the weakening of peso against the US dollar, as dollar-denominated costs of IPPs and PSAs account for 97 percent and 68 percent of their respective charges.

Meralco sourced 41 percent of its supply from IPPs and 50 percent through PSAs.

Further, Meralco said there was a 4.27-centavo-per-kwh reduction in the transmission charge for residential customers while taxes and other charges went down by 1.71 centavos per kwh.

Meralco’s distribution, supply and metering charges have remained unchanged for 47 months so far.