Customers of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) can temporarily heave a sigh of relief because their electric bills this month will have a reduction of P0.1180 per kilowatt hour (kWh).
As announced by Meralco, the rate decline resulted in an all-inclusive tariff of P11.3168 per kWh to be reflected in the April billing cycle versus last month’s P11.4348 per kWh; hence, the Meralco residential customers within the 200-kilowatt hour usage range can enjoy equivalent reduction of P24.
The main trigger to the rate cut was the lower generation charge which hovered at P7.3295 per kWh this month from P7.3790 per kWh in March.
“The generation charge went down even with the collection of the first installment of deferred generation costs equivalent to around P0.20 per kWh this April billing period,” the company stressed.
The deferred costs pertain to the P1.1 billion worth of accrued charges from the shutdown of the Malampaya gas production facility in February; and the pass-on had been staggered to cushion impact on consumers.
Other cost components, particularly transmission charge, owing to the ancillary services charges of the system operator, as well as taxes and subsidies, logged overall reduction of P0.0685 per kWh.
Meralco noted that charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) were slashed by P1.0462 per kWh “due to improved supply situation in the Luzon grid,” emphasizing that “average plant capacity on outage decreased to around 235 MW.”
Even the utility firm’s sourcing from power supply agreements (PSAs) had their prices trimmed by average P0.0741 per kWh; while capacity procured from independent power producers (IPPs) went up by P0.6710 per kWh.
Apart from the deferred portion of the IPP costs, Meralco qualified that the dispatch of the First Gas generating facilities had likewise been down because of their scheduled maintenance shutdowns; hence, the lower availability of their capacities had overall escalation effect on the rates.
Meralco further indicated that the appreciation of the Philippine peso’s value versus the US dollar also contributed to the overall cut on its April rate – because that impacted favorably on costs both for its PSAs and IPP contracts.
“The increase in the IPP rate was mitigated by the significant reduction in the use of more expensive alternative fuel by the First Gas plants and the stronger peso against US dollar, which affected 97-percent of IPP costs,” the power firm emphasized.
On capacity sourcing, Meralco specified that it secured bulk of its supply last month from its PSAs with 41-percent share; then 27-percent from IPPs and the balance of 32-percent from the spot market.
As summer months are still raging, the utility firm is incessantly reminding consumers “to continue practicing energy efficiency for better management of their consumption,” since historical accounts would show that rates often escalate by 10-percent to 40-percent within these periods.
