Higher power bills amid grid cost spike
Charges from Power Supply Agreements or PSAs went down by P0.3045 per kWh mainly due to a slide in costs for the South Premier Power Corp. emergency PSAs and the resumption of operations of the San Buenaventura Power Ltd. Co. power plant.
Rates of dominant power distributor Manila Electric Co. or Meralco will have a slight increase of P0.0229 per kilowatt hour or kWh in the March electricity rate.
This brings the overall rate for a typical household to P11.9397 per kWh this month from P11.9168 per kWh in February.
For residential customers consuming 200 kWh, the adjustment is equivalent to an increase of less than P5 in their total electricity bill.
A higher transmission charge offsets a decrease in the generation charge.
Transmission costs trend up
Driving this month’s overall rate rise is the P0.3976 per kWh increase in the transmission charge for residential customers due to higher ancillary service charges, which more than tripled and now account for around 52 percent of total transmission costs.
This increase was tempered by a P0.3518 per kWh reduction in the generation charge.
Charges from Power Supply Agreements or PSAs went down by P0.3045 per kWh mainly due to a slide in costs for the South Premier Power Corp. emergency PSAs and the resumption of operations of the San Buenaventura Power Ltd. Co. power plant after undergoing scheduled maintenance.
Charges from Independent Power Producers or IPPs similarly fell by P0.1443 per kWh, reflecting reductions in the Malampaya gas costs for the Sta. Rita plant under its new Gas Sale and Purchase Agreement, as directed by the Energy Regulatory Commission.
These were equivalent to generation charge reductions of P0.0447 per kWh and P0.0866 per kWh for the January and February 2024 supply months, respectively.
WESM costs down
Charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market went down by P0.1131 per kWh as the supply situation improved. The average capacity on outage in the Luzon grid decreased by more than 300MW.
PSAs, IPPs, and WESM accounted for 51 percent, 27 percent, and 22 percent, respectively, of Meralco’s total energy requirement for this period.