Meralco electricity rate to slightly increase this August

August 8, 2017

Meralco announced an increase for August, amounting to P0.1338 per kilowatt hour  for a typical residential household, thereby bringing the overall rate from last month’s P8.2511 per kWh to P8.3849 per kWh.

The slight rate increase this month amounts to a P27 increase in the total bill of a typical residential household consuming 200kWh, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

The August rate reflects the last instalment of the refund of over-recovery on pass-through charges from January 2014 to December 2016 totaling around P6.9 billion.

Meralco’s petition for refund with prayer for provisional authority was granted by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) on May 11, 2017 for implementation from June to August 2017.

The refund is not shown as a separate line item in the bill but is embedded in different pass-through charges indicated in the bill, which include generation, transmission, and system loss charges and lifeline and senior citizen subsidies. For residential customers, the refund translates to a reduction of PhP0.79 per kWh, excluding taxes.

Overall generation charge increased this August by P0.0378 per kWh, from P3.9385 per kWh in July to P3.9763 per kWh for this month.

The cost of power from power supply agreements (PSAs) increased by P0.2222 per kWh due to lower plant dispatch resulting from forced outages of Masinloc and Pagbilao.

The cost of power sourced from the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) also increased, by P0.0642 per kWh.  With the quarterly repricing of Malampaya natural gas, natural gas prices went up to reflect higher world crude oil prices. The share of PSAs and IPPs this month stood at 45.6 percent  and 44 percent, respectively. DMS