Consumers of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) will experience higher rates in November at P0.2347 per kilowatt-hour mainly due to higher ancillary charges.
Meralco said the overall rate for a typical household went up to P12.0545 per kWh this month from P11.8198 per kWh in October.
Residential customers consuming 200 kWh can expect an increase of around P47 in their monthly electricity bill.
Meralco said driving this month’s overall rate increase is the uptick in the transmission charge, which went up by P0.1211 per kWh for residential customers.
The company said the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines’ ancillary charges for regulating reserves went up almost fourfold to P91.35 per kW from P23.17 per kW.
The cost of regulating reserves accounted for around 76.5 percent of total ancillary service charges.
The Energy Regulatory Commission earlier approved an additional 257.78 megawatts for regulating reserves under new ancillary service procurement agreements as of October this year.
Meralco said the generation charge for November also went up by P0.0671 to P7.1938 per kWh from P7.1267 per kWh last month due to higher charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), the trading floor of electricity and its independent power producers.
WESM charges increased by P1.0933 per kWh due to tight supply conditions in the Luzon grid.
Average capacity on outage increased by around 956 MW and persistent high spot market prices triggered the imposition of the secondary price cap 7.22 percent of the time.
Charges from IPPs also went up by P0.1093 per kWh mainly due to lower IPP dispatch and the quarterly gas repricing.
Meralco said the P0.2980 per kWh decrease in power supply agreement charges mitigated the increase in the generation charge.
On Tuesday, a lawmaker urged Congress to split the mega-franchise of Meralco into three, accusing the utility of monopolistic behavior and failing to serve the interest of 7.6 million subscribers and overcharging them in the last nine years.
Rep. Dan Fernandez of Sta. Rosa City in Laguna said since Meralco has grown too big and dominant in the power industry, it is timely to review its franchise to pave the way for splitting it into three.
“It’s high time we renew its franchise to pave the way for the split of the mega-franchise we granted Meralco,” said Fernandez in his speech.
“If possible, we can split it into three franchises since Meralco actually operates in three sectors in Luzon — NCR (National Capital Region), South Luzon (Calabarzon), and North Luzon sector of Pampanga and Bulacan,” he added.
In response to the speech, Meralco said it complies with all government regulations and said Fernandez’s speech contained factual errors and was “riddled with inconsistencies.”
It also denied behaving as a monopoly.
