Meralco out to reel in open access clients

Manila Electric Co., the country’s biggest power distributor, is allocating as much as 1,600 megawatts for potential customers under the upcoming open access and retail competition regime.

In an interview, Meralco president and CEO Oscar S. Reyes explained that the first phase of the open access could yield as many as 600 customers qualified to participate in the open access and retail scheme.

The qualified customers are large power users that consume 1 MW or more each month. They will be able to choose their own electricity suppliers under the open access regime, unlike in the current system where they are limited to the supplier that has jurisdiction over their respective areas.

“A little more than 600 customers would qualify to become contestable customers and they account for roughly 28 percent of our total market. Clearly there are others who are interested and we would like to continue to service them because we’ve had them as customers for years,” Reyes said.

“We’d like them to consider us (Meralco) as a choice. There are other choices as well, so we just have to compete and ensure that we have an offer that is attractive to these contestable customers.”

According to Reyes, Meralco, through its local retail electricity supplier unit Meralco MPower, has conducted discussions with qualified customers to explain to them how the open access will work and how the scheme can benefit them as end-users.

Meralco will be coming up with customized service packages to tailor-fit the specific needs of large power consumers, he said.

So far, there are over 800 customers who are eligible to participate in the open access scheme, which may become fully operational by December next year.

Although the open access was supposed to start on Dec. 26, 2012, the concerned stakeholders and government agencies decided that they would need at least another year to ease the transition, lay down the necessary infrastructure and fine-tune the rules and regulations that would govern the mechanism, said Francis Saturnino Juan of the Energy Regulatory Commission.

Juan said the ERC would undertake a trial run sometime in March 2013, and expected commercial transactions based on an interim development system would take place in June.—Amy R. Remo