Consumers of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) will see their monthly bill increase by P0.1048 per kilowatt-hour in December 2024.
This brings the overall rate for a typical household to P11.9617 per kilowatt-hour from P11.8569 per kWh in November.
“For our residential customers with a consumption of 200 kWh, this translates to an upward adjustment of P21 in their total electricity bill this month,” Meralco vice president and head of corporate communications Joe Zaldarriaga said.
Zaldarriaga said higher generation charge led the overall rate increase due to higher rates at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, the trading floor of electricity and power supply agreements.
“This month’s increase was largely due to higher generation charge, which goes to our power suppliers,” Zaldarriaga said.
Meralco’s generation charge increased by P0.1839 per kWh as WESM charges went up by P0.2531 per kWh, with the tighter supply conditions in the Luzon grid as average capacity on outage increased by around 396 MW.
Charges from Meralco’s PSAs increased by P0.1050 per kWh due to the peso depreciation against the US dollar, which affected around 51 percent of PSA costs and lower average PSA dispatch.
Zaldarriaga said the P0.0410 per kWh decrease in charges from independent power producers (IPPs) mitigated the increase in the generation charges.
The impact of peso depreciation, which affected around 98 percent of IPP costs, was more than offset by higher average IPP dispatch with the return to normal operations of First Gas Sta. Rita Modules 20 and 30 from their scheduled outage.
Meralco sourced bulk of its power supply requirement from the PSAs at 40.2 percent, WESM at 31.4 percent and IPPs at 28 percent.
Transmission charges went down by P0.0940 per kWh due to lower ancillary service charges from the reserve market. Taxes and other charges, meanwhile, increased by P0.0149 per kWh.
Pass-through charges for generation and transmission are paid to the power suppliers and the grid operator, respectively, while taxes, universal charges and feed-in tariff allowance (FIT-All) are all remitted to the government.
Meralco’s distribution charge has not moved since the P0.0360 per kWh reduction for a typical residential customer in August 2022.
