Power consumers will experience slightly lower rates in February as generation charges declined, Manila Electric Co. said Friday.
Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga said the overall rate for a typical household would be P10.8895 per kWh in February, or P0.0106 lower than P10.9001 per kWh in January, because of lower charges at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market.
This means that residential customers consuming 200 kilowatt-hours will see a slight decrease of P2 in their monthly electricity bill.
Zaldarriaga said the lower generation charges more than offset the impact of distribution refund completion.
Generation charges went down by P0.2137 to P6.9154 from P7.1291 per kWh the previous month as the lower costs from WESM and the independent power producers offset an increase in charges from power supply agreements.
Zaldarriaga said WESM charges decreased by P3.7370 per kWh as the supply situation in the Luzon grid improved with less generation capacity on outage, lower power demand and the absence of yellow alerts in the supply month.
“The secondary price cap was also not triggered, marking the first time since October 2021 that the cap was not imposed during a supply month,” the executive said.
WESM, the trading floor of electricity, accounted for 16 percent of Meralco’s energy requirement in the period. Charges from Meralco IPPs also went down by P0.2950 per kWh.
“The First Gas plants’ reduced use of more expensive alternative fuel and lower natural gas prices after the quarterly repricing of Malampaya gas that reflected the recent trend in international crude oil prices pulled down the IPP rate,” Zaldarriaga said.
The continued appreciation of the peso, which affected 95 percent of IPP costs that are dollar-denominated, also contributed to the reduction.
Meralco procured 37 percent of its energy requirements in the January supply month from IPPs.
Meanwhile, Meralco’s PSA charges increased by P0.7970 per kWh on lower average plant dispatch.
Meralco’s 670-MW baseload PSA with South Premiere Power Corp. remained suspended following the implementation of a Court of Appeals-issued writ of preliminary injunction last month.
The PSAs provided 47 percent Meralco’s total energy requirement for the period.
“The reduction in the generation charge balanced the impact of the completion of the third of four distribution-related refunds, equivalent to P0.1923 per kWh for residential customers and is no longer reflected in the customers’ electric bills starting February,” Zaldarriaga said.
He said the remaining distribution-related refund, equivalent to P0.8656 per kWh for residential customers, continued to temper the monthly bills.
The last refund is set to be completed by May which would be felt the succeeding month.
Meralco’s distribution charges, on the other hand, has not moved since the P0.0360-per-kWh reduction for a typical residential customer in August 2022.
All other charges, including transmission charges and taxes, registered a slight net increase of P0.0108 per kWh.
The collection of the feed-in tariff allowance remained suspended following the issuance of the Energy Regulatory Commission’s resolution halting the collection of P0.0364 per kWh FIT-All rate for three months from December 2022 to February 2023.