The brunt of summer has taken its toll on the consumers’ electric bills, with the generation charge of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) rising sharply by R0.54 per kilowatt hour (kWh) to R6.14 per kWh this month from the May billing level of R5.60 per kWh.
In Zamboanga City, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) revealed that a 10-hour power interruption will affect parts of the city on June 9.
The NGCP said, customers of the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative, Inc. (Zamcelco), specifically its San Jose Gusu Substation, will experience the scheduled blackout between 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. on June 9.
Meralco explained that this was mainly due to the doubling in average price at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), reaching P16.30 per kWh from the previous month’s P7.91 per kWh.
“High demand for power and low availability of coal-fired and hydroelectric power plants resulted in higher trading amount and line rental costs from the WESM,” the utility firm added.
Even the P0.0542 per kWh reduction in the selling rate of state-run National Power Corporation (Napocor) was too negligible to offset the drastic spike in WESM prices.
The power utility firm has qualified that “although the WESM accounted for only 5.5-percent of Meralco’s power requirements for the supply month of May, the steep P8.39 per kWh increase in WESM charges caused a rise in the overall generation charge.”
And with the extended shutdown of the Quezon power facility, its overall procurement cost from independent power producers (IPPs) also climbed slightly by P0.0139 per kWh. The plant’s output is among the contracted capacities of the utility firm.
Prices in the spot market reflect conditions in the power system. Due to the shutdown of power plants which triggered tightening in supply, sudden rise in prices occurred.
The IPPs and NPC were major suppliers to Meralco, with shares of 43.2-percent and 51-percent, respectively. The balance is being sourced from the WESM.
Meralco added that “the Pagbilao and Sual coal-fired power plants experienced outages that limited generation supply in Luzon. This prompted the NGCP to designate oil-fired plants such as Malaya and Limay as must-run units.”
The distribution firm also emphasized that its demand jumped to a new high of 5,663 megawatts last month from a record of 5,374MW in 2010.
The generation charge is a cost component in the electric bills which has been moving on a monthly basis, depending on market dynamics as well as the operating condition of the power system.
The power outage in Zamboanga City will result from the preventive maintenance work to be conducted by NGCP’s line personnel, which would require the shutdown of the Pitogo-San Jose Gusu 69-kilovolt (kV) transmission line.
“Normal operations will immediately resume after work completion,” said the NGCP, which is the country’s sole power system operator and transmission service provider.
The company, which is privately-owned, likewise advised the affected customers to take the necessary preparations and precautions in anticipation of the scheduled 10-hour power interruption.
The NGCP noted that Zamcelco, being the affected distribution utility (DU), will be the one to determine which customers within its franchise area will have no access to electricity during the maintenance work.
The DU allots the available power within its franchise area and implements the power interruption schedule among the end-users.
