Napocor, Meralco to thresh out details of customer choice program

The National Power Corp (Napocor) and the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) are still threshing out details of the recently signed customer choice program (CCP), a ranking Meralco official said.

Meralco president Jesus Francisco told reporters over the weekend that an existing program of Napocor has a similar feature as the CCP.

"The expanded ODPS (one day power sales) of Napocor is a big concern for us (Meralco)," Francisco said.

He said the ODPS implementation may pose conflict to the CCP.

"They (Napocor) are implementing it and it has two phases. The first phase is limited to those with self generation but the second phase is open to non self-generators. The second phase may have the same customers with that of the CCP and you can only avail of one program at one time," the Meralco official said.

He said the ODPS program may have an edge over the CCP. "The customer choice program is good for one year so we (Meralco) are concerned that some customers may just choose the ODPS (which is timeless)," he said.

Francisco said they would be meeting with Napocor officials to resolve these issues.

CCP is a program that allows large industrial and commercial clients of Meralco with at least one megawatt monthly power demand or 24/7 operations to avail of Napocor’s TOU (time-of-use) rates

Recently, Meralco and Napocor signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) for the implementation of CCP.

But the MOA has to be approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) before the two power firms could implement the CCP.

"There will be a meeting on the Sept. 13 (between Meralco and Napocor) on the implementing guidelines that will be incorporated to the MOA which will be submitted to the ERC," he said.

Francisco feared that these issues would not be resolved, the program’s implementation will be delayed.

"We will try to finish it so we can submit the MOA to the ERC by this month. We expect it to be implemented by November or December this year," he said.