posted March 07, 2016 at 11:35 pm by Alena
Mae S. Flores
Manila Electric Co., the country’s
largest power retailer, said Monday power rates will likely drop this month
after an increase in February on improved plant dispatch and less scheduled
outages.
“There are indications that IPPs
[independent power producers] and PSAs [power supply agreements] will
register improved dispatch levels, which typically lead to a lower generation
charge,” Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga said.
Zaldarriaga said there were less
scheduled outages in the February supply month, compared inJanuary.
“Masinloc 1 also returned from its
scheduled maintenance in January and Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo also saw
improved output levels in February,” Zaldarriaga said.
Meralco, which has over 5.8 million
customers in its franchise area, is set to release the final generation rates
this week.
Meralco earlier submitted an
explanation to the Energy Regulatory Commission on the P0.42 per kWh rate
increase in February.
The distributor said the February
power rates reflected the normal power costs compared to the January rates
which included computation on the outage allowances of the power plants.
“It is further emphasized that the
Epira [Electric Power Industry Reform Act] and its implementing rules and
regulations allow the automatic pass through of these charges,” it said.
“After the true up of the capacity
fees every December of each year to account for the unutilized outage allowance
of the power plants for the full calendar year, the capacity charges normalize
in January of the following year,” Meralco said.
Meralco said for the January billing,
generation charges went down by P.049 per kWh brought about by the
reconciliation of outage allowances of the Pagbilao, Sual, Calaca and Ilijan
power plants.
It said the February billing merely
reflected the normal generation costs from the power plants supplying
power to Meralco under their respective PSAs.
The PSAs approved by the ERC provide
for a forced and unforced outage allowance for each plant. Each of the PSA
plants has a fixed capacity fees spread over 12 months by dividing the total by
the number of days in a year, less outage allowance to arrive at a daily
capacity fee rate.
“Without the effect of the unused
outage allowance, the average rate of the PSAs for the January 2016 supply
month would have increased by P0.17 per kWh and the generation charge for
the February 2016 billing months would have gone down instead by P0.266 per
kWh,” Meralco said.
It said the increase in the PSA
generation costs was tempered by the P0.0071 per kWh reduction in the average
rate of the independent power producer plants and the P2.2096 per kWh reduction
in the average price at the wholesale electricity spot market.
Meralco said the P0.0821 per kWh
increase in the transmission charge was due to the P0.09 per kWh increase in
the billings of National Grid Corp. of the Philippines for January supply month
due to higher ancillary charges.
“It should be further emphasized
that the foregoing charges are pass-through charges which are revenue-neutral
to Meralco. Meralco neither earns nor benefits from pass-through charges,”
Meralco said. The company’s distribution charges have remained unchanged since
July 2015.
Meralco sourced bulk of its power
requirements from the IPPS at 47.2 percent, followed by PSA at 46.7 percent and
WESM at 6.1 percent during the January supply month.
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