The Philippine Star - MANILA, Philippines - Customers of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) will be charged an additional eight centavos per kilowatt-hour (kwh) for the month of August.
Meralco increased generation charge from P5.29 per kwh in July to P5.37 per kwh this month. The generation charge is the cost of power Meralco sources from its suppliers.
The charge represents almost 60 percent of the customer’s average monthly power bill that goes directly to the utility’s power suppliers.
“The increase was primarily due to the higher cost of power sourced from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) and the independent power producers (IPPs),” the utility firm said.
According to Meralco, the cost of power purchased from the WESM increased by P1.29 per kwh in July. The cost of power supplied by Meralco’s major IPPs also went up by P0.17 per kwh.
However, the increase in the cost of power sourced from WESM and the IPPs was mitigated by the lower cost of power purchased from the National Power Corp. (Napocor), which registered a reduction of P0.52 per kwh.
Regulators, however, allowed Napocor to collect an additional P0.07 per kwh in the universal charge for missionary electrification component of consumers’ power bill to subsidize its off-grid operations.
Meralco has a pending petition before the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) for an increase in its maximum average price of P1.58 per kwh, which will be translated to the different tariffs for its customer classes, to P1.60 per kwh.
