Meralco slashes power rates by P15 in January
FILE Meralco logo. — EDWIN BACASMAS
MANILA, Philippines — Power distributor Manila Electric Company (Meralco) will slash the overall power rate for a typical household by P15 in the total bill in January, it announced on Monday.
Typical households are those that consume 200 kilowatt-hours (kWh).
“The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) announced today that overall rate for a typical household went down by P0.0746 per kWh to P9.7027 per kWh from last month’s P9.7773 per kWh. This is equivalent to a reduction of around P15 in the total bill of residential customers consuming 200 kWh,” it said in a statement.
Meanwhile, generation charge will be decreased by P0.1081 per kWh to P5.4262 per kWh from December 2021’s P5.5343 per kWh, “on the back of lower costs from power supply agreements (PSAs) and independent power producers (IPPs) that more than offset the higher charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM).”
PSA and IPP rates posted a cut of P0.4375 and P0.0543 per kWh, respectively.
“The higher share of excess energy deliveries of AC Energy plants and lower coal prices contributed to the reductions,” Meralco said.
Meanwhile, WESM charges rose by P0.8511 per kWh due to “higher average capacity on outage in the Luzon grid.”
“Forced and planned outages of major power plants repeatedly triggered the secondary price cap, which was imposed on 16.96% of total trading intervals in the December supply month versus only 0.22% of the time in November,” explained Meralco.
“Damages from Typhoon Odette and the continued Malampaya gas supply restriction also contributed to the grid’s tight supply condition,” it added.
The share of WESM this January was lower at 12.2 percent, the firm said.
Meralco also pointed out that transmission charge for residential customers hiked by P0.0728 per kWh mainly because of higher ancillary service charges.
Taxes and other charges recorded a net cut of P0.0393 per kWh, it said.
Pursuant to the Energy Regulatory Commission, the collection of the Universal Charge-Environmental Charge amounting to P0.0025 per kWh is still suspended.
Meralco further noted that the continued implementation of the Distribution Rate True-Up refund “continued to temper the overall movement of rates. The refund rate for residential customers is at P0.2761 per kWh and appears in customer bills as a line item called ‘Dist True-Up.’”
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