Rate hike in March Meralco billing seen (Sabong News)

Rate hike in March Meralco billing seen By MYRNA M. VELASCO Apart from financial pain at petroleum pumps, the customers of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) will need to expect further squeeze on their household budgets as their electric bills are also anticipated to rise this month. According to Meralco Vice President and Head of Corporate Communications Joe Zaldarriaga, the power firm’s initial calculations show that “there could be an upward adjustment in the March bills due to higher generation charge.” He qualified that prices at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) “remained elevated in the February supply month,” noting further that “despite the absence of yellow alert (manifestation of insufficiency of power reserves), the secondary price cap was implemented 5.63-percent of the time.” Meralco will announce its electricity rate adjustments for March billing cycle later this week. As of this writing, it is still waiting for all billings from its power suppliers. Zaldarriaga expounded that the other contributing factor to escalation in generation charge will be “the higher share of supply from the WESM as a result of the scheduled maintenance shutdown of the Quezon Power and San Lorenzo power plants” – these are two of the generating facilities supplying contracted power to Meralco. He specified “these maintenance shutdowns were performed in February to ensure availability of their supply during the dry months and the election period.” Additionally, the Meralco executive cited that “the continuing depreciation of the peso will magnify the effect of high fuel prices in the world market.” The foreign exchange rate already touched beyond P52 to the US dollar mark this week. The generation charge to be collected via the consumers’ electric bills will be paid back to the power generators and suppliers; while the regulated rate of Meralco is fixed and that has not been adjusted since 2015 because of the regulatory lag in the enforcement of the performance-based rate setting (PBR) methodology in the restructured power industry. This year’s summer months will come as a painful blow to all consumers — not just because of thin power supply warning but due to the aggravating factors that will make power bills soar as people will consume more electricity. Coal, oil and gas prices are on chorus in their astronomical spikes, and cost impacts would take a gut-wrenching pinch on consumers’ paychecks and wallets even harder in the months ahead. The scorching weather will prompt end-users to switch on their air-conditioning systems more often, but Meralco as well as the Department of Energy (DOE) have already been appealing for the adoption of energy-efficient lifestyles and to practice conservation measures on energy usage to help shave off peak demand and for them to tame their electric bills in the process.