Manila Electric Co. said Thursday electricity sales increased 4.9 percent in 2017 from a year ago, on strong demand by all customer groups.
The annual growth, however, was slower than the 8.1-percent rise registered in 2016.
“All the sectors have been showing hefty growth. Surprisingly, industrial has shown significant growth so with commercial. All of them, on average [posted a growth of] around 4.5 percent,” Meralco president Oscar Reyes said.
The power retailer expects a growth at 2.5 percent to 4 percent in the first half of 2018, with supply seen adequate to meet demand.
“We have the installed capacity to meet summer demand. It’s a question of there being no confluence of scheduled and forced outages, or any Malampaya shutdown,” Reyes said, referring to the Malampaya natural gas project off Palawan province.
Reyes said the regulatory approval of Meralco’s pending power supply agreements would be critical to future power supply.
“I think, what are pending in terms of PSAs are the earliest COD [commercial operations date] for mid-2019. We don’t have PSAs or any interim PSAs that will be required for this summer. But of course, even if that’s the case, early action is needed because as you push or delay action on this, it will impact on the timing and availability of power in 2019, 2020, 2021,” he said.
Meralco’s power generation arm Meralco PowerGen Corp. is set to start construction of the 1,200-megawatt Atimonan coal plant in Quezon and the 600-MW Subic coal plant in Zambales. Meralco is waiting for the approval of the power supply agreements by the Energy Regulatory Commission.
The approval of the pending PSAs could be delayed because of the ongoing leadership vacuum at the ERC, after four of its five-man commission was suspended by the Office of the Ombudsman for a year.
“We just want to be able to assure our customers in the Meralco franchise area that we will have adequate, reliable, least cost power. That’s why regulatory action and approval of our power supply agreements is critical,” Reyes said.
