Meralco rates down for third month

MANILA, Philippines — Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) rates have gone down for the third consecutive month in July, mainly driven by the decrease in the transmission charge.

Meralco said its overall electricity rates went down by P0.1068 per kilowatt-hour, from P10.0918 per kwh last month to P9.9850 per kwh this month.

This translates to a decrease of P21.36 in electricity bills of 200-kwh consumers, P32.04 for 300-kwh households, P42.72 for 400-kwh households and P53.40 for 500 kwh customers.

Meralco said this is the third straight month of electricity rate decrease and represents a total downward adjustment of around P0.57 per kwh since May.

The generation charge – the electricity bill’s biggest component – slightly went up from P5.4158 per kwh to P5.4227 per kwh due to higher Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) charges.

The increase in the WESM charge was offset by the lower charges of Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and stable charges of Power Supply Agreements (PSAs).

The power distributor said WESM charges increased by P1.8794 per kwh due to tight supply conditions in the Luzon grid.

The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said it raised 13 yellow alert notices and five red alert warnings in the power grid last month.

The plant capacity on outage increased as demand for power in the grid peaked at 11,344 megawatts in June.