Meralco rates down this month

MANILA, Philippines — Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) announced that its rates would go down for the fifth straight month this September as generation charges continue to drop.

At a virtual press briefing yesterday, Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga said the overall rate for a typical household decreased by P0.0623 per kilowatt-hour to P8.4288 per kwh this September, equivalent to a reduction of around P12 in the total bill of residential customers consuming 200 kwh.

Zaldarriaga said the overall rate is lower than last month’s P8.4911 per kwh and is also the lowest in three years, or since September 2017.

“It was really the force majeure provision that pushed the power rates down, as well as the reduced power demand in the service area,” Zaldarriaga said.

Meralco reported lower generation charges for September at P4.0860 per kwh, lower than the P4.1241 per kwh in August. This is the sixth straight month of generation rate reduction.

“Because of the reduced power demand in its service area during the community quarantine period, Meralco continued to invoke the force majeure provision in some of its Power Supply Agreements (PSAs),” Meralco said.

The company reported that this September, force majeure claim totaled to about P463 million, equivalent to customer savings of P0.1710 per kwh in generation charge.

“Without the force majeure claims, the generation charge and the total rate would have increased by 13 centavos and 14 centavos per kwh, respectively,” Meralco said.

Force majeure claims for the past six months totaled around P2.4 billion

In addition, Meralco said PSA charges decreased by P0.3032 per kwh due to Meralco’s force majeure claim. PSAs accounted for 54.8 percent of Meralco’s energy requirement.

Charges for the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM) were P0.0147 per kwh lower this month due to decrease in Luzon demand as some areas, including Metro Manila and adjacent provinces, returned to modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) from Aug. 4 to 18. The share of WESM to Meralco’s supply needs was 11.6 percent.

Meralco said purchases from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) inched up by P0.0601 per kwh mainly due to lower average plant dispatch. IPPs accounted for 33.6 percent of Meralco’s total supply.

In terms of other bill charges, Meralco said transmission charge for residential customers registered a slight reduction of P0.0112 per kwh due to lower ancillary service charges. It added that there was also a net decrease of P0.0130 per kwh in taxes and other charges.

Meralco emphasized that collection of the universal charge-environmental charge amounting to P0.0025 per kwh remains suspended, as directed by the ERC.

The company reported that peak demand in August declined to 6,862 MW from 7,116 MW in July due to the imposition of two weeks of MECQ in August.

Meralco head of utility economics Lawrence Fernandez said demand was seen to increase again above the 7,000 MW level in early September.