ELECTRICITY rates this month dropped by P0.0216 per kilowatt hour (kwh) to P8.7252 per kWh, the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) said Monday.
The reduction is equivalent to around P4 in the total bill of residential customers consuming 200 kWh. According to Meralco, the June power rate is the lowest since February 2018.
Generation charge, which makes up bulk of the electricity rate, went down to P4.3413 per kWh from P4.3848 per kWh last May.
Once again, Meralco invoked the Force Majeure (FM) provision in its Power Supply Agreements (PSAs) for the duration of the lockdown, reducing fixed charges for generation capacity that would have been charged by suppliers.
The significant reduction in power demand in Meralco’s service area during the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and modified ECQ period prompted the utility firm to invoke the FM.
This June, the FM claim totaled P614 million, equivalent to customer savings of P0.2208 per kWh.
Without the FM claims, generation charge and the total rate would have increased by 18 centavos and 24 centavos, respectively, from last month’s rate.
For the past three months, the savings due to FM claims reached a total of around P1.6 billion.
PSA charges decreased by P0.0613 per kWh mainly due to Meralco’s FM claim. Cost of power from independent power producers (IPPs) also decreased by P0.2334 per kWh due to higher average plant dispatch. PSAs and IPPs accounted for 50.4 percent and 47.1 percent of Meralco’s total supply, respectively.
Meanwhile, charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) increased by P0.3132 per kWh due to tighter supply conditions in the Luzon grid mainly due to higher incidents of plant outages and slight increase in demand. The share of WESM to Meralco’s supply needs was only at 2.5 percent.
Other pass-through charges registered an increase of P0.0219 per kWh. This was mainly due to the resumption of the P0.0495 per kWh Feed-In-Tariff Allowance (FIT-All).
The ERC suspended the collection of FIT-All for the April and May billing months in consideration of the ECQ.
Meanwhile, ERC suspended the collection of Universal Charge-Environmental Charge amounting to P0.0025 per kWh beginning this June, until further notice.
Meralco’s distribution, supply and metering charges, meanwhile, have remained unchanged for 59 months, after these registered reductions in July 2015.
It reiterated that it does not earn from the pass-through charges, such as the generation and transmission charges. Payment for the generation charge goes to the power suppliers, while payment for the transmission charge goes to the NGCP. Taxes and other public policy charges like the Universal Charges and the FIT-All are remitted to the government.
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