Power rates down
The billed electricity rate of power utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) will be on the downtrend by P0.1252 per kilowatt hour (kwh) this month, mainly due to higher capacity availability of power plants that just recently returned from scheduled maintenance.
For households in the consumption base of 200-kwh, the total cost reduction they will enjoy in this billing month shall be P25.04. The overall rate pass-on this month will decrease to P9.8789 per kwh from P10.0041 per kwh in the last billing cycle.
From this month’s slide in prices, however, Meralco indicated that the forthcoming July billing might take a reverse course given the series of supply tightness that Luzon grid had suffered in recent days.
“The effect of recent series of yellow alerts in the Luzon grid starting May 29 will be felt in July bills,” the utility firm said.
The utility firm indicated that its suppliers to which it had underwritten power supply agreements (PSAs) with – primarily unit 1 of the Pagbilao coal-fired plant and unit 1 of Ilijan gas-fired facility – are “back to normal operations” from their scheduled maintenance outage last month.
The generation charge in particular, which accounts for more than 50-percent of the rate components, had declined to P4.9828 per kwh vis-à-vis the previous month’s P5.0523 per kwh.
The other cost components adjusted downwards in this billing month had been the ancillary services charge of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) by R0.0861 per kwh.