Meralco: No hike in January billing

MANILA, Philippines - The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s biggest power distributor, will temporarily peg the generation charge for the month of January at P5.67 per kilowatt-hour from an earlier estimate of P7.37 per kwh in deference to the 60-day temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the Supreme Court.

This will translate to lower electricity bills for this month although temporarily, as Meralco would still have to recover costs after the dispute on high power costs is resolved.

“For January, we’ll maintain rates at November and December levels and customers will receive interim bill where generation charge is temporarily pegged at P5.67 per kwh,” said Larry Fernandez, Meralco head of utility economics. 

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), the country’s power regulator, advised Meralco to peg the January generation charge at P5.67 per kwh or the same as the December 2013 generation charge as ordered by the SC.

In a telephone interview yesterday, ERC Commissioner Josefina Asirit said although the TRO does not cover the generation charge for January, the circumstances are the same.

Thus, she said, the ERC advised Meralco to also peg this month’s generation charge at P5.67 per kwh.

‘The circumstances are the same for the November and December supply months,” Asirit said.

This supersedes the ERC’s Dec. 20 order for Meralco to maintain the January 2014 generation charge at P7.37 per kwh.

The generation charge is the cost of power that Meralco pays power plants for the previous month’s supply.

Meralco is allowed to pass this on to consumers through the automatic generation rate adjustment scheme. But it consults the ERC when the rates are too high, as what happened with the December generation charge.

Meralco’s generation charge for December rose to a record high of P3.44 per kwh as a result of the month-long maintenance shutdown of the Malampaya gas-to-power project, which supplies natural gas to the three power plants in Luzon.