The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) announced today an increase of Php 0.2347 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in the November electricity rate, bringing the overall rate for a typical household to P12.0545 per kWh.
For a residential customer consuming 200 kWh, this would mean an increase of around Php 47 in their total electricity bill.
The price hike is mainly driven by the slight increase in the transmission charge that went up by Php 0.1211 per kWh for residential customers due to higher ancillary service charges.
Generation charges also increased by Php 0.0671 to Php 7.1938 per kWh, primarily due to higher charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) that surged by Php 1.0933 per kWh due to tight supply conditions in the Luzon grid.
This is due to the upsurge of about 956 MW in average capacity on outages and frequent spikes in spot market prices that caused for the enforcement of the secondary price cap 7.22% of the time.
Generation charges were mitigated with a P0.2980/kWh decrease in Power Supply Agreement (PSA) charges, amid Malampaya’s quarterly repricing. Independent Power Supplier (IPP) charges rose by Php 0.1093 per kWh, which was also impacted by lower IPP dispatch.
In terms of energy requirements, WESM, IPPs, and PSAs accounted for 14.3%, 32.5%, and 53.2%, respectively, of the total energy demand for October.
The pass-through charges for generation and transmission are paid by MERALCO to power suppliers and the grid operator, while taxes, universal charges, and FIT-All are remitted to the government.
As directed by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), The collection of the Feed-In Tariff Allowance (FIT-All) remains suspended.
