Meralco rates lower in September by 10.1458/kwh

Customers of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) will feel relieved this September billing as the utility firm’s rate for residential end-users will go down by 10.1458 per kwh.

For subscribers within the 200kilowatt hour consumption bracket, the aggregate reduction in their bills will be 129 for this billing cycle.

Meralco said its rates will be reduced to the level of 110.0732 per kwh this September from the previous month’s 110.2190 per kwh.

With lower power bills this month, Meralco stressed its customers “can find some relief in the decrease,” at least a reverse track from the swelling

inflation rate announced by the government this week.

Meralco Spokesperson Joe Zaldarriaga said “this goes against the current trend that we see in other basic goods and commodities.”

On the generation charge component of the rates, this line item went down by 10.0772 per kWh to 15.2719 per kwh from last month’s 15.3491 per kwh.

Meralco explained that the cost downtrend was primarily driven by the 12.0768 per kWh reduction in settlement charges of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market.

“WESM prices decreased this month as a result of both less power plant capacity on outage and lower average demand for power in Luzon,”

the company said.

The other bill components were similarly down, by 10.0292 per kwh on the ancillary services charge of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP); while taxes and other charges were slashed by 10.0394 per kWh.

Meralco explained that the 10.6112 per kwh decline in WESM charges had been able to offset the average 10.3287 per kWh climb on cost of procurement from its power supply agreements (PSAs) with generation companies and its contracted independent power producers.

The level of the utility firm’s supply sourcing from IPPs had been at 40percent; and for the PSA-underpinned capacity, it had been at 39-percent.