Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) announced Wednesday a reduction in power rates by P0.1076 per kilowatt-hour in June, bringing down the overall rate for a typical household to P12.1552 per kWh from P12.2628 per kWh in May.
Meralco, the country’s biggest power retailer, said the lower generation charge drove the overall rate reduction this month due to the lower costs from its supplier.
“Our customers will continue to benefit from lower power rates this month mainly due to lower generation charge. A typical household consuming 200 kWh will see a decrease of around P22 in their total electricity bill for June,” Meralco vice president and head of corporate communications Joe Zaldarriaga said.
Meralo said driving this month’s overall rate reduction is the lower generation charge, which went down by P0.1099 per kWh to P7.3552 per kWh, primarily due to lower charges from power supply agreements (PSAs), independent power producers (IPPs) and the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM).
Charges from PSAs and IPPs decreased by P0.3699 and P0.1034 per kWh respectively, due to lower fuel costs and higher average dispatch.
Meanwhile, the transmission wheeling rates, or the fees collected by National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) for delivering electricity, went down by 0.27 percent in the May 2025 billing period.
NGCP said in a statement the transmission wheeling rates dropped to P0.4593/kWh, or a decrease of P0.0012/kWh from P0.4605 per kWh in April.
Ancillary services rates, on the other hand, went up by 9.29 percent or P0.0480 per kWh to P0.5655 per kWh from PhP0.5175 per kWh in April.
“As a pass-through cost, AS rates are only collected by NGCP and remitted directly to generation companies,” NGCP said.
Ancillary services, also known as support services used to balance and stabilize the grid during power supply-demand imbalance, are sourced from the AS reserve market or from AS providers with bilateral contracts with NGCP.
Overall average transmission rates reflected in the electricity bills of the end consumers went up by 4.60 percent to P1.1482 per kWh from P1.0978 per kWh.
NGCP is in charge of operating, maintaining and developing the country’s power grid, an interconnected system that transmits gigawatts of power at thousands of volts from where it is made to where it is needed by virtue of its concession agreement and franchise with the government.