Manila Electric Co., the biggest retailer of electricity, posted a three-percent increase in sales in April, reflecting a recovery from demand year-on-year.
Meralco attributed the higher April sales to “mainly due to less strict lockdown measures this April 2021, businesses returning to normal operations, especially industrial, the economy recovering this year, and residential consumption also going up, as compared to April 2020 when the pandemic just began… ,” said Meralco vice president and spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga.
Meralco’s franchise area was placed under very strict enhanced community quarantine or lockdown rules in April last year, severely limiting customers’ activities and affecting major businesses’ operations.
“First few months of the year show evidence of recovery and healthy growth. Through April 2021, energy sales grew 3 percent and NSI (net system input) by 2 percent compared with the same period last year,” Meralco president Ray Espinosa said during the virtual annual stockholders’ meeting.
Meralco recorded a four percent decline in consolidated energy sales volume to 10,473 gigawatt-hours in the first quarter.
“Likewise, we continue to energize more customers as shown by YTD customer count growth rate of four percent,” Espinosa said.
Meralco’s overall customer count rose by 4 percent to 7.2 million for a total year-on-year addition of 249, 000 net new accounts in the first quarter.
Espinosa assured Meralco would continue to deliver value to stakeholders through the firm’s strategic thrusts in 2021 and beyond.
“We will heighten revenue enhancement and expansion. For DU (distribution utility), we will accelerate the energization of project covered applications and ordinary service applications while ensuring zero leakage and zero unbilled volumes,” he said.
Espinosa said Meralco would also expand the business by serving new areas through key partnerships and by extending pole management operations to urban services and non-cable attachments such as 5G surveillance and environmental sensors.
He said Meralco is now integrating Global Business Power Corp.’s operations to its power subsidiary Meralco PowerGen Corp.
“In addition, we will continue to drive the growth Bayad, Radius Telecom, Miescor and all our subsidiaries with the launch of their new and strategic offerings,” he said.
Espinosa said Meralco would put emphasis on digital transformation, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“More than ever digital transformation is vital to Meralco. we will continue to build the grid of the future today through our AMI (advance metering infrastructure) and advanced distribution management system, and through substation and distribution automation,” he said.
“We are also improving our capabilities in load sensing and predictive fault monitoring to heighten service delivery while integrating an integrated ICT command center to increase visibility and control over our grid,” Espinosa said.
Meralco plans to accelerate the transition to clean energy.
“We aim to source 1,500 megawatts of power requirements from renewable energy sources in the next 5 years. We are also committed to building up to 1,500 MW of utility scale RE power plants in the next 5to 7 years,” he said.
It will move toward the electrification of its vehicle fleet consistent with its sustainability goals.
“Beginning this year, we will deploy electric pickups, vans, cars and motorcycles to serve our Metro Manila business centers,” Espinosa said.