Manila Electric Company said Friday the overall rate for a typical household will rise P0.1212 per kilowatt-hour to P8.5500 per kWh in October from P8.4288 per kWh in September.
Meralco said the new rate is equivalent to an increase of around P24 in the monthly bill of residential customers consuming 200 kWh.
The rates went up after five consecutive months of power rate reduction. Meralco said the month’s overall rate was still lower by P0.5362 per kWh compared with P9.0862 per kWh in October 2019.
“The net rate reduction since the start of the year is still well over P1 per kWh,” the power retailer sad.
Meralco attributed the higher rates this month to increased generation charges brought about by tighter power supply in the Luzon grid.
Power generation charges rose P0.1373 per kWh to P4.2233 in October from P4.0860 in September.
After six straight months of reduction totaling P0.5772 per kWh, Meralco said the October generation charges are still P0.4399 per kWh lower than in March.
Meralco said this month’s increase in generation charges was mainly due to the higher Wholesale Electricity Spot Market charges, brought about by tightened supply condition and higher demand.
The WESM operates as the country’s trading floor of electricity.
Meralco said the Malampaya natural gas restriction from Aug. 28 to Sept. 6 and forced outages of several large plants in the first week of September tightened the supply conditions in the Luzon grid.
This led WESM to cap the bids at P32 per kWh, the highest this year, on Sept. 5 and 7 despite the absence of yellow alerts.
The higher Luzon demand and more generation capacity on outages resulted in P1.1605 per kWh increase in the WESM rate.
After being placed under modified enhanced community quarantine in August, Meralco noted a rise in the Luzon demand in September with the return to general community quarantine of Metro Manila and adjacent areas.
Peak demand in September increased to 10,570 megawatts from August’s 10,422 MW. It was also higher than 10,392 MW in September 2019, the first time since the start of the pandemic that demand exceeded its year-ago level.