Manila Electric Co. said Tuesday consumers will see lower power rates this month on lower transmission charges.
Meralco said in a statement the residential rate for a typical household would go down by P0.0451 to 8.46 per kilowatt-hour in September. This would translate into a reduction of P9 in the electricity bill of a household with monthly consumption of 200 kWh.
Meralco said the reduction was due to the downward movement in transmission charges, which more than offset higher generation charges. Meralco rates went down despite the series of yellow and red alerts experienced in late July to early August.
Luzon plunged to a series of yellow and red alerts starting July 26 to August 5 amid thin power reserves as many power plants were on maintenance shutdown while others suffered technical problems.
Luzon customers also experienced rotating blackout Tuesday afternoon because of a transmission line problem experienced by National Grid Corp. of the Philippines.
Affected areas of the hour-long rotating brownouts from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. were portions of Laguna, Bulacan, Cavite, Caloocan, Las Pinas, Malabon, Pasig, Manila, Navotas, Quezon City, Makati, Cainta and Taytay.
“Luzon grid went on red alert due to zero ancillary services capacity brought about by insufficient power supply from generating plants,” Energy Department spokesman Felix William Fuentebella said.
National Grid said in an advisory the Batangas-Makban 230kV Line 1 tripped at 12:46 p.m. on Tuesday, causing the isolation of power plants with a combined capacity of 1,030 megawatts.
“The loss of power prompted the grid operator to put the Luzon grid on red alert from 2 p.m.,” it said.
National Grid said line personnel were investigating the cause of the incident.
Meralco activated the interruptible load program after National Grid issued the advisory to mitigate the impact of the isolation of power plants in Batangas.
National Grid restored the line at 3:45 p.m. Tuesday, while the red alert status was lifted 5 p.m.
The Energy Department has an ongoing technical audit of the state of the country’s power plants while the Energy Regulatory Commission has a separate audit of National Grid’s operations.
Meralco said generation charges went up by P0.0879 per kWh in September.