By
Lenie Lectura - February 7, 2020
Electricity
rates in February declined to P8.8623 per kilowatt-hour from P9.4523 per kWh,
mainly due to lower generation charge.
The P0.59 decrease will
result in a P118 reduction for household consumers with an average consumption
of 200 kWh, the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said Thursday.
The rate is also lower
in the same period 10 years ago at P9.0331 per kWh.
“The reduction is
mainly due to a lower generation charge after the implementation of new power-
supply agreements [PSAs] starting last December 26 last year,” it said.
These PSAs were secured
after a successful competitive selection process (CSP) under the guidance of
the Department of Energy (DOE) and the expeditious provisional approval of the
Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).
From P4.9039 per kWh
last month, the generation charge for February decreased to P4.5090 per kWh, a
reduction of P0.3949 per kWh.
Generation charge is a
major component of an electric bill.
The new baseload
PSAs—with San Miguel Energy Corp., South Premiere Power Corp., and AC
Energy—registered a significantly lower generation cost of P4.0372 per-kWh
average and contributed 21 percent to Meralco’s supply requirements.
Meanwhile, charges from
the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market also decreased this month, driven by
lower power demand and improved supply conditions in the Luzon grid. The
WESM rate for February is P3.0529 per kWh. The share of WESM to Meralco’s
supply needs increased to 23 percent.
These offset the cost
of power from Meralco’s independent power producers (IPPs) and old PSAs, which
increased by P0.7429 per kWh to P5.2920 per kWh, mainly due to lower average
plant dispatch resulting from the scheduled outage of Quezon Power and First
NatGas-San Gabriel from January 17 to 25 and January 4 to 23, respectively.
The IPPs and old PSAs
accounted for 56 percent of total supply.
Meanwhile, taxes and
other charges registered a decrease of P0.2839 per kWh.
The feed-in-tariff
allowance went down by P0.1731 per kWh after the ERC approved a lower FiT-All
rate of P0.0495 per kWh, as compared with the previous subsidy of P0.2226 per kWh.
Contributing to the
decline was the P0.0543 per-kWh reduction in the Universal Charge after
the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. said that it completed
the collection of National Power Corp.’s stranded contract cost recovery.
These cushioned the
impact of a P0.0888 per-kWh increase in the transmission charge for residential
customers, which was a result of higher National Grid Corp. of the Philippines
(NGCP) ancillary service charges.
Meralco’s distribution,
supply and metering charges, meanwhile, have remained unchanged for 55 months,
after these registered reductions in July 2015.
Meralco reiterated that
it does not earn from the pass-through charges, such as the generation and
transmission charges.
Payment for the
generation charge goes to the power suppliers, while payment for the
transmission charge goes to the NGCP.
Taxes and other public
policy charges, like the UC and the FiT-All, are remitted to the government.
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