Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said Tuesday consumers will experience a significant reduction of P0.7499 per kilowatt-hour in their monthly electricity bill for May 2025.
It said the overall rate for a typical household went down to P12.2628 per kWh from P13.0127 per kWh in April.
“For residential customers consuming 200 kWh, they will see a decrease of around P150 in their total electricity bill this month. The rate reduction is due to lower generation and transmission charges,” Meralco vice president and head of corporate communications Joe Zaldarriaga said.
Meralco said the lower prices at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, the trading floor of electricity and lower costs from its independent power producers (IPPs) pulled down the generation charge by P0.3144 per kWh to P7.4651 per kWh.
WESM charges decreased by P1.1424 per kWh as a result of the improved supply situation in the Luzon grid.
Meralco said that while the grid’s peak demand rose by 1,372 MW, this was more than offset by the 1,475 MW reduction in average capacity on outage.
Meanwhile, IPP charges also went down by P0.9555 per kWh because of higher average IPP dispatch and the peso appreciation to its strongest level since December 2023, affecting around 97 percent of IPP costs that were dollar-denominated.
The power retailer said these reductions tempered the P0.1884 per kWh increase in charges from power supply agreements (PSAs), which in turn was due to lower PSA dispatch.
The stronger peso, affecting around 56 percent of PSA costs that were dollar-denominated, mitigated further increase in PSA rate.
WESM, IPPs and PSAs accounted for 26 percent, 33 percent, and 41 percent respectively of Meralco’s total energy requirement for the period.