Customers of Manila Electric Co. may not experience a price spike in their September electricity bills in spite of the series of yellow and red alerts in late July to early August.
“So far, indications are that gen charge movement will be flattish,” Meralco vice president and head of utility economics Lawrence Fernandez said.
He said “prices settled down lower after the price spikes at the end of July (and) start of August” in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, the country’s trading floor of electricity,
WESM prices go up when demand is high and supply is tight.
Luzon was placed on a series of yellow and red alerts from July 26 to August 5 due to thin power reserves, after many generation plants went on maintenance shutdown while others suffered technical problems that forced them to undergo forced outage.
“There is a possibility that lower prices for the rest of the supply month offset the price spikes during the times of yellow/red alerts,” Fernandez said.
He said Meralco would come up with actual computations this week.
Meralco consumers experienced lower rates by P0.11 per kilowatt-hour in august due to lower generation charges.
Meralco attributed the decrease in the overall rate to the lower generation charge, which was P0.20 per kWh lower than last month’s P3.86 per kWh.
Charges in the WESM also decreased by P3.48 per kWh due to lower spot prices.
The cost of power secured by Meralco from the independent power producers, meanwhile, increased P0.16 per kWh because of the lower dispatch of San Lorenzo and Sta. Rita plants. The cost of power obtained from plants covered by power supply Agreements was almost at the same level as last month, with only a slight increase of P0.002 per kWh.
Meralco obtaind 49.3 percent of its power supply from PSAs and 40.3 percent from IPPs.
Meralco does not earn from the pass-through charges, such as the generation and transmission charges but profits from distribution charges.
The payment for the generation charge goes to the power suppliers, while that if the transmission charge is paid to National Grid Corp. of the Philippines.
