Customers of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) will need to allot higher budgets for their electric bills this month, as the utility firm raised its overall tariff by P0.3982 per kilowatt hour (kWh) to P10.4612 per kWh from the May level of P10.0630 per kWh.

For household consumers in the 200-kilowatt hour usage band, the aggregate increase in their bills would be P79.64, according to the power firm.

Meralco attributed the increase to the P0.3313 per kWh hike in generation charge, which already climbed to P6.5590 per kWh from P6.2277 per kWh from last month. The generation charge accounts for more than 50-percent of the all-inclusive tariff reflected in the electric bills.

Other cost components being passed on in the bills also increased. For instance, the transmission charge relating to the ancillary services procurement of National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) logged slight increase of P0.0083 per kWh while taxes and other charges similarly posted net increase of P0.0586 per kWh.

Relative to the higher generation charges, Meralco emphasized that the billings from its contracted independent power producers also rose by P0.6083 per kWh, while the invoices from its power supply agreements (PSA)s with private generation companies escalated by P0.0859 per kWh.

The company particularly cited that “fuel charges from the First Gas power plants went up by 8.0 percent with the increased usage of more expensive liquid fuel amid the ongoing Malampaya gas supply restriction.”

Meralco similarly indicated that “coal prices went up by an average 23 percent,” and that substantially contributed to the higher charges of its IPP and PSA-underpinned electricity suppliers.

On the power utility’s supply sourcing from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), it noted that settlement prices remained elevated because of uptick in power demand, which hit a record of 12,113 megawatts last month “following the continued easing of mobility restrictions and consequent increase in economic activity.”

Meralco further stated that this month’s generation charge still integrates the last three remaining installments of pass-on costs – and that covered deferred generation charges for the March bill as well as the second of three installments on the deferred costs for April billing – and these summed up to P0.20 per kWh.

Conversely, the cost-offsets in this month’s billing cycle are the continued implementation of the P0.9353 per kWh refund earlier ordered by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC); as well as the sustained suspension on the collection of the P0.0025 per kWh universal charge-environmental charge (UC-EC) component in the bill.