Stakeholders in the power industry, including regulators, are still baffled as to how to treat the January 2014 billing of utility firm Manila Electric Company (Meralco) given the Supreme Court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) on the latter’s P4.15 per kilowatt hour (kWh) rate hike last month.
ERC Commissioner Josefina Patricia Asirit sounded off that the P7.37 per kwh imposed cap on Meralco’s generation charge for January has to be tackled anew by the Commission in a meeting.
She indicated that three options are being considered: Either to allow Meralco to do full pass-on of its calculated January billing; proceed with the capped generation cost; or extend the restrained December charge of P5.67 per kwh.
The power industry regulators emphasized that they are seriously weighing the implications of another TRO petition pending at the high court.
However, if the Meralco generation charge will continue to be frozen at P5.67 per kwh, the utility firm will already face serious dilemmas in settling its accounts with power suppliers.
“That could mean having its (Meralco’s) obligations to power suppliers piling up… it will be a very dangerous precedent and it could extremely discourage investment flows,” industry sources have noted.
When asked, the utility economics division of Meralco indicated that their lawyers are still studying some options on their January billing “because the action may have some legal implications.”
Typically, bill preparations start first week of the month, but this time, actions are getting stalled because of the high court’s ruling on Meralco’s December rate hike.
On Monday, the ERC also had its meeting to discuss updates on its continuing investigation of alleged collusion of the power generators due to plant shutdowns which supposedly triggered spikes in Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) prices.
Asirit said they had “highlighted the need to have more detailed data submitted to ERC,” as well as “study/evaluate bidding behavior of 50 plus trading participants in 1,488 trading intervals.”
She added that five of the six power plants which had been on forced outage in November and December were already inspected. Another one is due for physical inspection this week.
Asirit has been assuring the public “of thorough and in-depth investigation/analysis” of the allegations of collusion hurled against power generators last month. source
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