Power rates up by P.66 per kwh this month

 MANILA, Philippines - Customers of Manila Elec­tric Co. (Meralco) will see March electricity bills go up by P0.66 per kilowatt-hour (kwh) after the Malampaya shutdown pushed up the gen­eration This brings the overall rate to P9.67 per kwh for the month, Meralco announced yesterday.

A household with a 200-kwh consumption will see an increase of P132 in their bills.

This month’s rate hike is lower than forecast, Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga said in a briefing.

Originally, Meralco projected power rates to increase by P1.44 per kwh amid power plants’ shift to diesel or condensate, foreign exchange and supply-demand scenario during the 20-day Malampaya shutdown from Jan. 28 to Feb. 16.

Meralco said this month’s rate increase is driven mostly by the upward movement in the generation charge, which rose P0.58 per kwh to P4.90 per kwh.

This already includes one-third of the differential amount computed by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), Meralco senior vice president and head of utility economics Larry Fernandez said in the same briefing.

“Another part of the adjustment is the lower dispatch of some power plants that also went on maintenance. And because there was a decrease in supply because of the maintenance shutdown of plants, we also saw an increase in spot market prices,” he said.

The Malampaya shutdown affected the natural gas supply to the Ilijan, Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo plants – which supply an aggregate capacity of 2,565 megawatts (MW) to Meralco’s franchise area. These plants had to switch from natural gas to more expensive liquid fuel so that they can continue supplying power to the grid.

The Malampaya shutdown also coincided with the scheduled maintenance of other power plants such as SEM-Calaca Power Corp. Unit 1, Quezon Power Ltd. and one block of the Ilijan power plant, which collectively contribute some 1,185 MW of Meralco’s power requirements.

Earlier this week, the ERC allowed the power distributor to implement an increase of P0.2211 per kwh in the generation charge from March to May.

This pushed up the rate of independent power producers to P0.63 this month. The share of IPPs was at 33.4 percent.

Overall charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) also rose P1.68 per kwh due to higher capacity on outage as well as higher demand by around 253 MW on the average.

The share of WESM purchases to Meralco’s total requirements went up from 23.2 percent to 25.4 percent.

However, there was a decrease of P0.03 per kwh in power supplied through Meralco’s Power Supply Agreements and Interim Power Supply Agreements. The share of PSAs and IPSAs this month stood at 41.2 percent.