The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has logged roughly P50 billion worth of aggregate savings for customers that have been availing of electricity services from the retail electricity suppliers (RES).

According to ERC Chairperson Monalisa C. Dimalanta, the scale of cost savings registered by RES participants accrued to P49.1 billion as of June this year from the reckoning comparative period in 2023.

She similarly qualified that the average tariff being enjoyed by RES customers hovered at P5.49 per kilowatt hour (kWh) as against the more expensive P10.00 to P12.00 per kWh range of pass-on rates reflected in the electric bills of incumbent utilities, such as that of Manila Electric Company.

The ERC opined that the regime of Retail Competition and Open Access (RCOA) policy in the restructured power sector has been among the positive gains of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) - and this is the industry segment where competition has also been intensifying.

“The EPIRA is working, the EPIRA goal is to encourage competition and supply centers – and we have seen over the last few years, particularly in the growth of the retail space, that it has been a low-profile success – but it’s a success nonetheless that large consumers in our country today can now contract directly with their own choice of suppliers,” Dimalanta noted.

Most of the RES players are not just dangling cost competitive supply offers to customers, but they are also getting more innovative with their suite of value-added services, such as those on energy audits, helping their customers with energy efficiency strategies and others are also pitching for RE and electric vehicle (EV) convergence.

Touted as a premium service in the RES space is the offer of supply from renewable energy (RE) capacities - and that can be procured via the Green Energy Option Program (GEOP) underpinned by government rules.

Many businesses, primarily multinational corporates, typically prefer electricity supply sourcing from RE-generated facilities because they can employ this as a component of their sustainability targets as well as net zero goals.

Given the considerable success of the retail competition policy, the ERC indicated that it will be deciding soon on lowering the threshold for RCOA so more Filipinos could finally exercise their ‘power of choice’ on contracting their electricity services.

Currently, the threshold is for 500kW and higher and the coverage are mainly industrial and commercial end-users, including medium scale enterprises.

The eventual goal is to bring down retail competition to the level of households, so that the current captive customers – which are mainly residential end-users, can also benefit from the privileges of lower rates as well as better services that RES customers are now enjoying.