Meralco announces higher power rates in November
By Alena Mae S. Flores – November 9, 2023, 11:14 am
from manilastandard.net
Consumers of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) will see their power rates in November increase by P0.2347 per kilowatt-hour on higher ancillary charges.
Meralco said the overall rate for a typical household went up to P12.0545 per kWh this month from P11.8198 per kWh in October.
Residential customers consuming 200 kWh can expect an increase of around P47 in their monthly electricity bill.
Meralco said driving this month’s rate increase is the uptick in the transmission charge, which went up by P0.1211 per kWh for residential customers on higher ancillary service charges.
The company said the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) ancillary charges for regulating reserves went up by almost fourfold to P91.35 per kW from P23.17 per kW.
The cost of regulating reserves accounted for around 76.5 percent of total ancillary service charges.
The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approved an additional 257.78 megawatts for regulating reserve under new ancillary service procurement agreements as of October this year.
This was brought about by the directive of the Department of Energy to NGCP to conduct firm contracting to ensure availability of power supply.
Meralco said the generation charge for November also went up by P0.0671 to P7.1938 per kWh from P7.1267 per kWh last month on higher charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), the trading floor of electricity and its independent power producers (IPPs).
WESM charges increased by P1.0933 per kWh amid the tight supply conditions in the Luzon grid.
The average capacity on outage increased by around 956 MW, while the persistent high spot market prices triggered the imposition of the secondary price cap 7.22 percent of the time.
Charges from IPPs went up by P0.1093 per kWh mainly due to lower IPP dispatch and the quarterly gas repricing.
Meralco said the P0.2980 per kWh decrease in power supply agreement (PSA) charges mitigated the increase in the generation charge.
It said lower international coal prices, higher PSA dispatch and higher excess energy deliveries, which are price-discounted, contributed to lower the PSA rate.
WESM, IPPs and PSAs accounted for 14.3 percent, 32.5 percent, and 53.2 percent, respectively, of Meralco’s total energy requirement for the October supply month.
Other charges also registered an increase of P0.0465 per kWh.
