MERALCO LOWERS FEBRUARY POWER RATES

MANILA Electric Co. (Meralco) on Thursday announced it is cutting power rates in February by 59 centavos per kilowatt hour (kWh).

In a statement, Meralco said the reduction of more than half a peso brings overall power rates to P8.8623 per kWh from P9.4523 per kWh in January.

“This is also lower than that of 10 years ago, February 2010, which was P9.0331 per kWh,” the statement added.

Households that consume 200 kWh will have a P118- drop in their monthly bill; 300 kWh, P177; 400 kWh, P236; and 500 kWh, P295.

Meralco attributed the decrease to a lower generation charge after its power supply agreements ( PSAs) took effect last December 26.

“These PSAs were secured after a successful competitive selection process under the guidance of the Department of Energy and the expeditious provisional approval of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC),” it said.

“The back- to- back months of rate decrease to start the year total, P1 per kWh, and goes against the usual trend of February rates, adjusting upward due to price normalization after reconciliation of outage allowances, as seen in the previous five years,” it added.

The generation charge for February

dropped by P0.3949 per kWh to P4.5090 per kWh from P4.9039 per kWh last month.

The new baseload PSAs — with San Miguel Energy Corp., South Premiere Power Corp. and AC Energy — had a significantly lower generation cost of P4.0372 per kWh average.

Rates from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market also went down to P3.0529 per kWh, driven by lower power demand and improved supply conditions in the Luzon grid.

These offset the cost of power from independent power producers and old supply deals, which rose by P0.7429 per kWh to P5.2920 per kWh, mainly due to lower average plant dispatch resulting from the scheduled outage of Quezon Power and First NatGas- San Gabriel from January 17 to 25 and January 4 to 23, respectively.

Meanwhile, taxes and other charges registered a decrease of P0.2839 per kWh.

Feed- in tariff allowance ( FiTAll) tumbled by P0.1731 per kWh after the ERC approved a FiT-All rate of P0.0495 per kWh, lower than the previous subsidy of P0.2226 per kWh.

There was also a P0.0543- perkWh reduction in the universal charge after the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. earlier announced it completed the collection of the National Power Corporation’s stranded contract cost recovery.

These cushioned the impact of a P0.0888-per-kWh increase in the transmission charge for residential customers, which was a result of higher ancillary service charges levied by the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines.

Distribution, supply and metering charges, meanwhile, were unchanged for 55 months after posting reductions in July 2015.