Meralco sees lower rates this month

By Iris C. Gonzales (The Philippine Star) | Updated September 4, 2014 - 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines - Electricity rates may go down slightly this month due to fewer of outages of
power plants during the August supply month compared to previous months, the countrys biggest,
power distributor said.
Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said there are no final figures yet as the data is still incomplete although
indications show that the grid suffered less forced outages of power plants during the August supply
month.
We expect this to lead to a lower generation charge for September, Larry said Fernandez, head of
Meralcos utility economics.
Meralco is expected to release the final electricity rates for September next week.
Last month, rates rose by roughly P62 for the average residential customer with a 200-kilowatt-hour
consumption on the back of higher generation and universal charges as well as taxes on power.
This is because of a 31-centavo per kwh increase in electricity bills for August after a cumulative
reduction in rates of 86 centavos per kwh since May.
In all, the generation charge for August 2014 went up by 23 centavos per kwh to P5.64 per kwh from
P5.41 per kwh, pushed by billing adjustments for the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), the
countrys trading floor for electricity and an increase of six centavos per kwh in the average cost of
contracted power supply sourced from power supply agreements.
In its August billing advisory, Meralco said the shortfall in power supply due to forced and scheduled
outages of various plants, aggravated by the impact of Typhoon Glenda aggravate the tight power
situation and pushed prices higher.








Tagomata, Margarita
4D PH

The months of July and August have been challenging for Meralco because of the power outages due to
the numerous typhoons. Meralco forsees lower rates per kwh by this September as they resolve many
internal problems related to the power outages, and suffered power plants. Disaster preparedness is
very important in calamities wherein communication and resources would be scarce, and we should all
be wary of the procedures that are necessary to be safe without electricity. As a student, I am very
happy to know that the charges of Meralco have lowered and that they have solved the issues regarding
the shortfall in power supply. I just hope that they can readily address these situations so that there will
not be another aggravating impact of power outage, and price hike in the future.