NGCP wheeling rates for Feb marginally up 2%
By Jed Macapagal – February 13, 2025
from Malaya Business Insight
The wheeling rates charged by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) for its primary service of delivering electricity through the grid rose 2.03 percent in January.
The January billing period will be billed against National Grid’s customers this February. Its customers are mainly power generating companies.
The company said in a briefing on Wednesday its transmission wheeling rates rose to P0.5422 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in January 2025 from P0.5315 kWh in December 2024.
“This slight increase is still due to the low consumption of electricity for the month of January. As you know, we have a fixed revenue. That fixed revenue is divided (over) the consumption level,” according to Ryan Datinggaling, NGCP head of Revenue Management Department.
“So, if consumption is low, there is a slight increase in wheeling rates,” said Datinggaling.
National Grid’s ancillary service (AS) rates, which form part of the wheeling rates for the January 2025 billing period, also increased by 12.02 percent to P0.0712 per kWh compared with P0.5928 per kWh in December 2024.
The company’s ancillary service rates for January is the first tranche of the remaining 70 percent of the uncollected amount from the AS reserve market incurred in March 2024, Datinggaling said.
In March 2024, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) suspended the energy reserves market citing its operations as a factor that was pushing power rates higher.
But by May 2024 the industry regulator partially lifted the suspension order against the amounts that needed to be settled in the reserve market, and allowed power generators to recover some of the costs from trading transactions amounting to P1.7 billion or 30 percent of the collectibles totaling P5.7 billion.
The remaining 70 percent is now being collected on staggered basis for three months in Luzon and Mindanao and six months in the Visayas.
NGCP’s ancillary service consists of available generating capacity to meet contingency reserve requirements when a power generating unit trips or a transmission interconnectivity problem occurs.
In compliance with the directives from the Department of Energy and the Regulatory Commission, National Grid says it entered into firm agreements with power producers for 50 percent of its ancillary service requirement and 50 percent from the AS Reserves Market.
While National Grid is responsible for the collection of ancillary service charges, it said that it does not profit from these fees, as they are pass-through costs remitted directly to power generators providing grid stabilization services.
