Written by Madelaine B. Miraflor Reporter Published on 17 March 2013
Manila Electric Company (Meralco) consumers will soon likely experience a price rollback in their electricity rates as the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) is set to release its decision on the utility’s P10-billion refund from the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) in the second half of this year.
On the sidelines of 2013 Philippine Hydro Summit organized by the Philippine Association of Small Scale Hydropower Inc., Francis Saturnino Juan, ERC executive director, told reporters that the commission will come up with a decision within the second half of the year regarding the P10-billion refund claims of Meralco from PSALM. Juan said that the hearing on the issue is over and “soon, decision will come out.”
“Meralco has proposed a methodology for calculating the over recoveries by just taking out the equivalent of 2.98 from the NPC
[National Power Corp. or Napocor] time of use. That proposal was also concurred by PEMC [Philippine Electricity Market Corp.],” Juan said.
“After the parties submitted their respective memorandums, the last one, sometime in December, the case was evaluated and actually,
deliberations were already made, so it’s just a matter of the commission reviewing its decision,” he said.
Juan added that the length of making the decision sometimes “takes a few days, a few weeks, sometimes it can take up to a month.”
He reassured that by the second half of this year, “there will already be a refund because in the main decision of the commission, it already found that there’s really a need for that.”
“Ang question na lang [the only question left] is how much should be refunded and by who, to whom and how will it be flowed through the end consumers who actually paid these amounts,” he added.
In late October 2012, ERC disclosed that PSALM indeed owes Meralco customers P10 billion. Juan earlier said that an updated calculation placed the potential amount that PSALM owes Meralco consumers at around P10 billion.
A previous report said that the alleged double charging started out of the sudden implementation of the Napocor-Meralco transition supply contract, and that the price determination methodology in Wholesale
Electricity Spot Market (WESM), both of which were approved by ERC. WESM is a trading platform where utilities like Meralco source a portion of their supply not covered by contracts. source
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