POWER distributor Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said Tuesday there would be a slight increase of P0.1048 per kiloWatt-hour this December, bringing the overall electricity rate for a typical household to P11.9617 per kWh from the previous month’s P11.8569.
For residential customers with a consumption of 200 kWh, this translates to an increase of P21 in their total electricity bill this month.
Meralco said the increase was largely due to the hike in generation charge, which increased by P0.1839 per kWh because of the increased costs from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) and Power Supply Agreements (PSAs).
Further, it said that WESM charges went up by P0.2531 per kWh due to tighter supply conditions in the Luzon grid as the average capacity on outage increased by around 396 megawatts (MW).
Meanwhile, charges from PSAs increased by P0.1050 per kWh due to the depreciation of the peso that affected around 51 percent of PSA costs, and also because of lower average PSA dispatch.
However, mitigating the further increase in the generation charge was the P0.0410 per kWh decrease in charges from Independent Power Producers (IPPs), as IPP costs, which were affected by peso depreciation, were more than offset by higher average IPP dispatches due to the normalization of the operations of First Gas Sta. Rita Modules 20 and 30 from their scheduled outages.
Charges from the WESM, PSAs and IPPs accounted for 31.4 percent, 40.2 percent and 28.3 percent, respectively, of Meralco’s total energy requirement for the period.
As for the other components for the rates, the transmission charge went down by P0.0940 per kWh due to lower ancillary service charges from the Reserve Market, while taxes and other charges increased by P0.0149 per kWh for the given period.
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.
Also, Meralco said its distribution charge had not moved since the P0.0360 per kWh reduction for a typical residential customer in August 2022.
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