Power rates to go up in November: Meralco

November 9, 2017

Meralco announced an increase for November, amounting to P0.3436 per kWh for a typical residential household, thereby bringing the overall rate from last month’s P9.2836 per kWh to P9.6272 per kWh, a company statement said Thursday.

The rate increase this month amounts to a P68.72 increase in the total bill of a typical residential household consuming 200kWh.

The November rate increase is mainly due to the P0.1925 per kWh increase in generation charge.

Overall generation charge increased this November by P0.1925 per kWh, from P4.7155 per kWh in October to P4.9080 per kWh this month primarily due to higher WESM charges and the depreciation of the peso versus the dollar.

Charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) increased by P0.4810 per kWh. Despite the reduction in Luzon power demand this month, spot market prices increased due to tighter supply conditions. The share of WESM purchases to Meralco’s total requirements this month was 15 percent.

Cost of power from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Power Supply Agreements (PSAs) registered increases due to the weakening of the peso against the US dollar.

Peso depreciation had a much larger impact on IPP costs because around 97 percebt of IPP costs are dollar-denominated. On the other hand, the impact of peso depreciation on PSA costs was moderated by a lower share of costs in US dollars at around 58 percent. DMS