Power rates in Metro Manila will go up for the second consecutive month in February due to higher generation charges, according to the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco).
The P0.5738 per kilowatt hour (kWh) increase this February brings the overall power rates of Meralco to P11.9168 from last month’s P11.3430 per kWh.
It is equivalent to an increase of around P115 in the total bill of residential customers consuming 200 kWh monthly.
Meralco said this month’s overall rate increase is mainly driven by the generation charge, which rose by P0.4552 to P7.1020 per kWh, primarily due to higher cost of power from independent power producers (IPP) and power supply agreements (PSA).
The company said charges from PSAs went up by P0.1558 per kWh due to higher charges from emergency PSAs and peso depreciation, which affected around 11 percent of PSA costs that were dollar-denominated.
The increases in IPP and PSA charges could have been higher if not for the P0.4071 per kWh decrease in charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) due to improved supply situation in the Luzon grid, Meralco added.
Transmission and other charges also registered a net increase of P0.1186 per kWh as it has reflected the collection resumption of the P0.0364 per kWh feed-in tariff allowance.
Meralco said distribution, supply and metering charges – from which it derives revenues – remained unchanged from August 2022 at P0.0360 per kWh.
Of the total power requirements for the month, 20.4 percent was from WESM, 32.8 percent from IPPs and 46.8 percent from PSAs, Meralco said.
Meanwhile, Meralco has called on large power consumers to enroll in the government’s Interruptible Load Program (ILP) to help ensure the availability of sufficient electricity supply for the upcoming dry season.
ILP is an energy demand-side management program in which large-load customers are asked to use their generator sets or shift their operations, instead of drawing power from the grid, to spare households from power interruptions during instances when power supply is insufficient to meet demand.
At present, there are 103 companies with 528 megawatts de-loading capacity across the Meralco franchise area that are enrolled in the ILP.
Since it was first implemented in 2014, ILP has spared as many as 1.8 million households from power interruptions in the Meralco franchise area, the company said.
