Manila Electric Co. said Friday power rates will increase by P0.0229 per kiloWatt-hour in the March, an upward adjustment that will be reflected in the April bill of customers of the country’s largest power distributor.
The increase brings the overall power rate for a typical household to P11.9397 per kWh this month from P11.9168 per kWh in February. For residential customers consuming 200 kWh, the adjustment is equivalent to an increase of less than P5 in their total electricity bill.
The upward adjustment was due to a P0.3976 per kWh increase in the transmission charge for residential customers due to higher ancillary service charges, which more than tripled this month and now account for around 52 percent of total transmission costs. The increase in transmission charge was tempered by a P0.3518 per kWh reduction in the generation charge.
Charges from power supply agreements went down by P0.3045 per kWh mainly due to lower energy payments for the South Premier Power Corp. emergency supply deal and the resumption of operations of the San Buenaventura Power Ltd. Co. power plant after undergoing scheduled maintenance. PSAs contributed 51 percent of Meralco energy supply.
Charges from Independent Power Producer, which accounted for 27 percent of supply, similarly decreased by P0.1443 per kWh, already reflecting deductions of incremental Malampaya gas costs for FGPC–Sta. Rita under its new Gas Sale and Purchase Agreement, as directed by the Energy Regulatory Commission. These were equivalent to generation charge reductions of P0.0447 per kWh and P0.0866 per kWh for the January and February 2024 supply months, respectively.
Charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market went down by P0.1131 per kWh as the supply situation improved. Average capacity on outage in the Luzon grid decreased by more than 300MW. The spot market provided Meralco with 22 percent of its energy requirements.
Other charges also registered a net decrease of P0.0229 per kWh. Pass-through charges for generation and transmission are paid by Meralco to the power suppliers and the grid operator, respectively, while taxes, universal charges, and the Feed-In Tariff Allowance or FIT-All are all remitted to the government.
Meralco’s distribution charge, on the other hand, has not moved since the P0.0360 per kWh reduction for a typical residential customer beginning August 2022.
“Our earlier projection of a lower generation charge would have resulted to lower overall rates. However, the steep upward adjustment in the transmission charge effectively wiped out the reduction in generation charges causing a slight uptick in overall rates,” said Meralco Vice President and Head of Corporate Communications Joe R. Zaldarriaga.
