Consumers of Manila Electric Co. will experience slightly higher rates in May after the power retailer announced the overall charge for a typical household increased by P0.1853 per kilowatt-hour to P8.5920 per kWh from last month’s P8.4067per kWh.
The total bill of a residential customers consuming 200 kWh will go up by around P37, the power distributor said.
Meralco vice president and spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga attributed the higher rates to the completion of the refund of over-recovery in pass-through charges.
Meralco completed the Energy Regulatory Commission-approved refund of over-recoveries in pass-through charges, so the corresponding deduction for the refund would no longer appear beginning in the May bill.
The ERC, in an order released on Dec. 29, 2020, directed Meralco to refund over-recoveries in transmission and other charges. Meralco implemented the order starting January and completed the refund in April.
The impact to residential customers, from the months of January to April, was a refund of around P0.15 per kWh.
Zaldarriaga said, however, that this month’s overall rate was still lower than last year’s rate by P0.1548 per kWh. “This is also the lowest rate for May since 2017,” he said.
The increase this month was tempered as Meralco continued the implementation of the Distribution Rate True-Up refund, which began in March.
The ERC provisionally approved Meralco’s proposal to refund around P13.9 billion over a period of 24 months or until the amount is fully refunded.
This amount represents the difference between the actual weighted average tariff and the ERC-approved interim average rate for distribution-related charges for the period July 2015 to November 2020.
For residential customers, the refund rate is P0.2761 per kWh and appears in customer bills as a line item called “Dist True-Up”.
Meralco’s generation charge in May was stable at P4.5474 per kWh, a slight P0.0104 per kWh increase from P4.5370 per kWh in April.
Charges from Meralco’s power supply agreements increased by P0.2541 per kWh because of low dispatch of San Gabriel as a result of the ongoing restriction of Malampaya natural gas supply.
Charges at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, the country’s trading floor of electricity also remained high because of the tight supply conditions in the Luzon grid as capacity on outage stayed above 3,300 megawatts and Luzon’s peak demand in April exceeded 10,400 MW.
The WESM price movement, however, does not reflect the impact of the yellow alert on May 5.
The higher WESM prices were offset by lower charges from the independent power producers which decreased by P0.1921 per kWh. The PSAs provided 52 percent of Meralco’s energy requirement while WESM’s share went down to 7 percent this month. Meralco sourced 41 percent from the IPPs.
Transmission charges for residential customers increased by P0.0933 per kWh following the completion of transmission refund, coupled with higher ancillary service charges. Taxes and other charges also registered a net increase of P0.0816 per kWh.
Meanwhile, the collection of the universal charge-environmental charge amounting to P0.0025 per kWh was still suspended, as directed by the ERC.
Meralco’s distribution, supply, and metering charges remained unchanged for 70 months.