Consumers of Manila Electric Co. will experience slightly higher rates in their July billing amounting to P0.0761 per kilowatt-hour.
Meralco said in a statement the overall electricity rate increased to P8.25 per kWh from last month’s P8.17 per kWh.
“The slight rate increase this month amounts to around P15 increase in the total bill of a typical residential household consuming 200 kWh,” it said, adding the July rate reflected the refund of over-recovery on pass-through charges from January 2014 to December 2016 totaling around P6.9 billion.
The Energy Regulatory Commission approved Meralco’s petition for a refund with a provisional authority for implementation on May 11, 2017 covering June to August 2017. The refund translates into around P0.79 per kWh for residential customers, excluding taxes.
The refund is not shown as a separate line item in the bill but is included in the different pass-through charges indicated in the bill, which include generation, transmission, and system loss charges and lifeline and senior citizen subsidies.
Meralco said the overall generation charge increased in July by P0.0799 per kWh to P3.9385 per kWh from P3.8586 per kWh in June, mainly due to higher charges from the independent power producers, or IPPs, and the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market or WESM.
The cost of power purchased from Meralco’s IPPs increased P0.1751 per kWh due to peso depreciation and lower plant dispatch.
Meralco said the weakening of the peso against the US dollar caused the increase in peso conversion of dollar charges of the IPP and power plants where Meralco has supply agreements.
The cost of power from the WESM, the country’s trading floor of electricity, also increased by P0.4548 per kWh mainly due to billing adjustments, which include the additional compensation approved by Philippine Electricity Market Corp. for the must-run unit operations of the 650-megawatt Malaya thermal power plant from 2012 to 2015.
The Malaya plant, still owned by the government, is declared a must-run unit when power supply is short.
Meralco secured 40.8 percent of its supply from its IPPs and 12.4 percent from the WESM during the June supply month.
The cost of power from Meralco’s power supply agreements or PSAs decreased P0.0176 per kWh due to lower coal prices and improved average plant dispatch despite the upward impact of the peso depreciation. Meralco obtained the bulk of its requirements from its PSAs at 46.8 percent.
Meralco noted a a slight increase of P0.0042 per kWh in the transmission charge of residential customers, while taxes and other charges dropped by a combined amount of around P0.0080 per kWh.
Meralco’s distribution, supply, and metering charges, meanwhile, have remained unchanged for 24 months, after the registered reductions in July 2015. Meralco has over six million customers in its franchise area.