Meralco to put up own RES unit

Manila Electric Co., the country’s biggest power distributor, is putting up its own local retail electricity supplier (RES) unit that will allow it to sell power to retail customers, even those outside its franchise area.

In a statement, Meralco chief operating officer Oscar S. Reyes said the utility was hoping to provide customers “the power of choice in their electricity provider while continuing to experience the full services of Meralco.”

The move to put up a local RES came in the wake of the announcement made by the Energy Regulatory Commission that starting December 26, large power users can already choose their own power suppliers. The coverage will be expanded after two years to include customers with a 750-kilowatt individual or aggregated demand. Eventually, households will also be covered by this scheme called open access regime.

The open access regime means customers of Meralco and other distributors holding franchises may opt to find other suppliers, even if they continued to be the utility that provides networks and metering services in their franchise areas.

With a retail electricity supplier (RES) unit, Meralco can still act as a “merchant” of power. This means that customers can still pick Meralco as its power supplier, regardless of how or where the utility sources its electricity requirements. The company already informed the ERC on Friday about its intention to put up a RES.

Currently, Meralco sources electricity for its 4.8 million customers from independent power producers (IPPs), state-run National Power Corp. and the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM).

“As a distribution utility which has served its customers for many years or even decades, Meralco values the relationship it has established with them in the same way that they may value such. Given that, we feel that we owe it to our customers to continue giving them the option for full service that we’ve provided for years,” Reyes noted.

Reyes said the company was hoping that even with the advent of the open access regime, existing customers will still consider Meralco as an option among other service providers.

“We hope that our customers will continue to source their power needs from us, along with a range of other services that we provide,” he said.

“Meralco will have a very competitive electricity supply portfolio sourced from existing generating plants and from new highly efficient baseload, mid-merit and peaking power plants the company’s power generation subsidiary is putting up to meet customer requirements. Meralco remains committed to its existing long-time customers and new customers, to offer a wide range of valued products and services as a total solutions company,” Reyes explained.

Meralco is building a $2.3-billion power-generation portfolio, which will add around 1,500 megawatts in new capacities to the Luzon grid over the next five to six years.