POWER rates will go up this month by P0.0902 per kilowatt-hour, resulting in an upward adjustment of around P18 in the total bill of a typical household consuming 200 kWh.
The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said on Monday that overall electricity rates slightly increased to P10.1803 per kWh this month from last month’s P10.0901 per kWh, mainly on account of higher generation charge.
From P5.2725 per kWh last month, generation charge for December went up to P5.3303
per kWh, an increase of P0.0578 per kWh.
The increase is mainly the result of increases of P0.5167 and P0.1783 per kWh in the cost of power from power supply agreements (PSAs) and independent power producers (IPPs), respectively.
Despite a stronger peso, PSA and IPP charges increased this month due to lower average plant dispatch.
San Lorenzo Modules 50 and 60 were on scheduled maintenance outage from October 28 to November 7, and October 28 and November 8, respectively.
The shares of PSA and IPP purchases in Meralco’s total requirement this month were 42 percent and 38 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, the cost of power from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market went down by P1.0268 per kWh due to improvement in the Luzon power supply situation and a lower demand for power in November. WESM provided 20 percent of Meralco’s supply needs.
Transmission charge of residential customers slightly increased by P0.0169 per kWh. Meanwhile, taxes and other charges also went up by P0.0155 per kWh this month.
Meralco’s distribution, supply and metering charges, meanwhile, have remained unchanged for 41 months, after these registered reductions in July 2015.
Meralco 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 FiT-All rate are remitted to the government.