The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) warned on Thursday that power rates are likely to go up this month.
It did not say by how much, but the utility firm is expected to announce it in the next few days. “There is a strong likelihood that prices will increase this January,” said Meralco utility economics head Lawrence Fernandez in a Viber message.
“The [December] supply month saw the grid placed under several yellow alerts and experienced more days with the imposition of the secondary price cap, compared to the November supply month.
Besides this, the DRTU-1 [Distribution Rate True Up-1] refund will have been completed in December, so that this deduction will no longer appear on January bills,” he said.
While the foreign currency exchange improved, which would help manage the dollar-denominated portions of the power generators’ charges, Fernandez said Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) prices remain elevated last December, as the reductions in peak and average demand were more than offset by the increase in capacity on outage.
DRTU-1 worth P13.89 billion was implemented in March 2021. The average refund rate of P0.27 per kilowatt hour (kwh) for residential customers ended in December last year.
There are other DRTU refund orders of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) that will be completed this month and in May.
DRTU-2 worth P4.84 billion started in March 2022 and will end this month. During this period, residential customers are entitled to a P0.19 per kwh of refund.
The implementation of DRTU-3 was completed last November. The total refund amounted to P7.8 billion or P0.47 per kwh for residential customers.
DRTU-4 is from July 2022 to May. The P21.8-billion refund is equivalent to P0.87 per kwh of savings to residential customers.
All four DRTU adjustments have reached P1.80 per kwh for residential customers. This means that after Meralco would have completed the implementation of DRTU 1 to 4, residential customers will see an increase in their electricity bills.
The DRTU adjustments helped temper customers’ monthly bills for the past months.
Image credits: Patrick Roque/Wikimedia Commons Commons