Meralco rates up in December for third straight month

MANILA, Philippines — Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) rates will increase for the third straight month in December on higher generation charge pulled up mainly by wholesale electricity spot market (WESM) charges.

Meralco said the overall rate for a typical household consuming 200 kilowatt-hours  increased by P0.3044 per kwh to P9.8623 per kwh this December from last month’s P9.5579 per kwh.

The adjustment will mean an increase of around P61 in the typical household’s total electricity bill.

Despite the adjustment, Meralco said electricity rate this month is still around P0.70 per kwh lower than in April.

This month’s higher rate brought about by higher WESM charges led to overall generation charge increase.

The generation charge rose P0.1650 per kwh from P5.0317 per kwh to P5.1967 per kwh.

This, as charges from the WESM increased by P1.0799 per kwh driven by tighter supply conditions in the Luzon grid.

As a result, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the Luzon grid on Yellow Alert on two occasions.

“The average capacity on outage in November increased by 525 megawatts (MW) because of scheduled and forced outages of some power plants and the natural gas supply restriction of Malampaya onshore gas plant implemented by SPEX from Nov. 10 to 14,” Meralco said.

The share of WESM in Meralco’s supply needs was reduced to 10 percent.

Meanwhile, the cost of power from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and power supply agreements (PSAs) also increased by P0.1106 per kwh and P0.0987 per kwh, respectively, due to lower average dispatch and weakening of the peso against the US dollar.

“San Lorenzo (527 MW) was on scheduled outage from Nov. 1 to 9, while Masinloc Unit 2 (344 MW) was on planned maintenance outage for the whole supply month,” Meralco said.

Around 96 percent of IPPs costs are dollar-denominated. Sixty one percent of PSA costs are also dollar-denominated.

IPPs’ and PSAs’ share in Meralco supply needs is at 38 percent and 52 percent, respectively.

This month, transmission charge for residential customers increased by P0.0753 per kwh as a result of higher NGCP ancillary service charges.

Meanwhile, taxes and other charges registered an increase of P0.0641 per kwh.

Meralco’s distribution, supply and metering charges, on the other hand, have remained unchanged for 53 months, after these registered reductions in July 2015.