Meralco announces overall power rates in January decreases

January 8, 2019

The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) announced Tuesday overall electricity rates decreased to P9.8385 per kWh in January from December’s P10.1803 per kWh.

The downward adjustment of P0.3418 per kWh will mean a decrease of around P68 in the total bill of a typical household consuming 200kWh.

From P5.3303 per kWh last month, the generation charge for January went down to P4.9119 per kWh, a decrease of P0.4184 per kWh.

The decrease is mainly the result of a P1.2293 per kWh reduction in the cost of power from Meralco’s Power Supply Agreements (PSAs). The share of PSAs to Meralco’s total requirement this month was at 40 percent.

Meralco public information office head Joe Zaldarriaga said  “lower PSA charges were brought about by a reduction in capacity fees as a result of the annual reconciliation of outage allowances done at the end of each year under the PSAs approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

The early completion of annual capacity payment for Sual Unit 1, Ilijan, Pagbilao Unit 1 and PEDC resulted in savings immediately passed on to consumers by way of lower electricity rates.  The capacity fees of PSAs will return to normal levels in January that will impact on February bills after the downward adjustment in December.”

Charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) went down by P0.0165 per kWh due to improvement in the Luzon power situation.

The demand for power in the Luzon grid decreased by 101 MW. Meanwhile, cost of power from the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) went up by P0.0847 per kWh due to peso depreciation. About 92 percent of IPP charges are dollar-denominated. WESM and IPPs provided 18 percent and 42 percent of Meralco’s supply needs, respectively.

Transmission charge of residential customers increased by P0.1210 per kWh this month due to higher NGCP ancillary services charges.  Taxes and other charges went down by P0.0444 per kWh this month. DMS