Manila Electric Co., the country’s biggest electricity retailer, warned over the weekend unexpected outages of power plants could affect supply during the dry months and result in higher rates.
Meralco president Oscar Reyes told reporters the power supply was adequate during the critical months after generators moved their maintenance schedules after the May elections.
Reyes, however, said any unexpected power plant shutdown would impact on the demand and supply scenario.
“We’re moving now to the start of summer months. However, because of the elections, generation plants have been re-scheduling maintenance. In terms of supply side, you have significantly less maintenance shutdown and hopefully less outages. Our forecast is there should be adequate supply unless we have unexpected plants going down,” Reyes said.
He said Meralco had kept its more than five million customers aware of possible rate increases due to higher demand during the dry months.
After months of low prices, Meralco reported higher rates of P0.42 per kilowatt-hour for residential consumers in February, prompting an investigation from the Energy Regulatory Commission.
“In the end it’s going to be a question of fuel procurement. Fuel component started to go up because of cost of fuel, gas and foreign exchange. If they remain benign, then hopefully the increases will not be significant,” Reyes said, when asked if power rates will go up by the same level as the February levels.
Reyes said higher demand and any unexpected power outages could affect power rates.
“If not, hopefully impact will be less. Normally, we see rates going up during summer months. It’s something not out of the ordinary. it’s reflective of the patterns of the past. Rates tend to, because of generating charges, increase during the months of March to June [and] July,” he said.
Reyes said the sales growth in January “seems to be strong” as more residential and commercial projects were being built and energized.
“For 2015 against 2014, we were at 5 or 5.4 percent so we’re seeing continuing growth in January but have to wait for the quarter,” he said.
Reyes urged the ERC to approve Meralco’s pending capital expenditure application of close to P18 billion to meet the demands of the distribution business.
“We’re still working with ERC. We remain hopeful that they will of act on it. It’s important for us to put in place infrastructure to support load growth and customer increases,” he said.