Customers of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) will need to pay additional P0.2744 per kilowatt hour (kwh) in their electric bills this month, as the overall tariff of the utility firm had increased to P8.7497 per kwh this January from last month’s P8.4753 per kwh.
For typical residential customers in the 200-kwh usage threshold, they will brace for an aggregate upward adjustment of P55 in their forthcoming bills.
The utility firm indicated that the tariff hike should have been heftier if not for the mitigated adjustments ordered by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) on the over-recoveries and under-recoveries of Meralco.
The regulatory body in particular ordered a refund of Meralco’s over-recoveries for three months; while the collection of under-recoveries had been stretched within two years or 24 months, hence, that will result in a net refund to Meralco customers of P0.1150 per kwh in the current billing cycle.
Despite the higher rate this month, Meralco noted that its all-inclusive tariff for January is still P0.70 per kwh lower compared to the P9.4523 per kwh passed on in the same month last year.
For the January 2021 generation charge, Meralco reported that this climbed by P0.3058 per kwh to P4.4574 versus the December level of P4.1516 per kwh. On the whole, this is still leaner than last year’s January generation charge of P4.9039 per kwh.
Conversely, the transmission charge component of the rate had been reduced by P0.0236 per kwh, “due to the refund of transmission over-recoveries,” while taxes and other charges posted a net decline of P0.0078 per kwh, amid the pass-on of increased FIT-All subsidy for renewable energy (RE) capacities.
On supply procurement, Meralco’s exposure in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) in the last supply month hovered at 6.3-percent; while securing the bulk of 56.4-percent from its power supply agreements (PSAs); and the balance of 37.3-percent from its contracted independent power producers.
The charges of its PSAs had so far jacked up by P0.2723 per kwh; and the IPP-procured capacities were also higher by P0.2428 per kwh. Supply sourced from the spot market had also been down by P0.6135 per kwh.
The increase in the generation charge had been primarily attributed to the 252 megawatts downtrend in demand in December, just reaching 9,634 MW from a higher level of 9,886MW in the prior month, because of cooler temperatures and the series of non-working holidays.
Meralco similarly indicated that electricity demand within its franchise area dipped to its lowest since the lifting of the stricter phase of lockdown or the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) which started easing since May.
“Lower demand led to fixed costs from power suppliers being spread over lower energy volume, resulting in higher effective generation rates to consumers,” the utility firm explained.