Electricity rates up this month

Customers of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) will see an increase of P0.3436 per kilowatt-hour in electricity bills this month mainly due to higher electricity spot market prices and the peso depreciation that pushed up the generation charge.

Meralco said the overall rate went up from P9.3236 per kwh in October to P9.6272 per kwh this month.

This translates to an additional P68.72 increase in bills of typical residential household consuming 200 kwh, P103.08 for 300 kwh, P137.44

for 400 kwh and P171.80 for 500 kwh. Meralco attributed the November rate increase to the P0.1925 per kwh increase in generation charge.

The overall generation charge rose P0.1925 per kwh from P4.7155 per kwh last month to P4.9080 per kwh this month primarily due to higher Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) charges and the depreciation of the peso versus the dollar.

“Charges from the WESM increased by P0.4810 per kwh. Despite the reduction in Luzon power demand this month, spot market prices increased due to tighter supply conditions,” Meralco said.

The power distributor sourced 15 percent of its total requirements from WESM during the supply month.

The cost of power from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Power Supply Agreements (PSAs) also registered increases due to the weakening of the peso against the US dollar.

“Peso depreciation had a much larger impact on IPP costs because around 97 percent of IPP costs are dollardenominated. On the other hand, the impact of peso depreciation on PSA costs was moderated by a lower share of costs in US dollars at around 58 percent,” Meralco said.

The IPP cost, which increased by P0.2868 per kwh, was also attributed to lower average plant dispatch due to the scheduled outage of San Lorenzo Module 50 for the entire supply month.

Despite higher fuel prices, the increase in cost of PSAs was tempered to P0.0076 per kwh due to improvement in average plant dispatch.

The shares of IPPs and PSAs in Meralco’s total requirements stood at 41 percent and 44 percent, respectively.

In terms of other bill components, the transmission charge of residential customers increased by P0.0860 per kwh due to higher ancillary service charges of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines.

The ancillary service is necessary to support the transmission of capacity and energy from resources to loads while maintaining reliable operation of the transmission system in accordance with good utility practice and the grid code.