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MANILA
Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s largest power
distributor, is currently reviewing its earlier plan of
offering prepaid electricity service.
The plan
is intended to make electricity more accessible to
customers, particularly those with low consumption and
to the marginalized sector of society, hoping to
reduce pilferages within Meralco’s franchise area.
“In view
of the technological advancements and cost-efficient
systems already available in the market, we plan to
revisit our plans to offer prepaid electricity service
to make electricity much accessible to the critical
mass, and help address incidence of pilferage in our
franchise area,” a source, who was privy to the issue
told BusinessMirror in a phone interview.
The
earlier results of their feasibility study before,
according to the source, deemed Meralco to put its plan
to look for more cost-effective solutions for its
customers.
“While
the time-of-use scheme of the National Power Corp. [Napocor]
could be applied in our plans to offer prepaid services
and benefit our potential customers, we are also looking
for a cost-effective solution that will enable to
possibly make available to our customers prepaid
electricity services,” said the source.
The
source declined to give full details as to how much it
will cost Meralco to offer such service, but added that
the cost of offering such service was more costly than
the cost of having meters read, sending bills to
customers and collecting payments.
The cost
of prepaid metering, according to the source, when
Meralco initially looked into it, was more expensive.
“Mobile commerce has helped bring the cost of prepaid
system to go down,” the source added.
In
another development, Meralco will also seek to increase
its reconnection fee to P108.06 for disconnected meters
of residential and small commercial customers who are
delinquent in their bill payments.
Its
application for this had been filed with the Energy
Regulatory Commission (ERC), and public hearings had
been set for last July 23 and 30, 2007.
The
existing reconnection fee for residential customers are
P20 for those with zero to 200 kilowatt-hours kWh of
consumption; P30 for those within the 201 to 300 kWh
bracket; P40 for those in the 301 to 1,000 kWh
consumption level, and P50 for those with more than
1,000 kWh usage.
For
small commercial customers, which refers to general
service customers, reconnection fees are similar to that
of residential customers for the same volume of
consumption.
Meralco,
in its application, argued that it is seeking the
reconnection fee increase after the cost of its
operation and maintenance of meters increased.
Meralco
said the higher cost of reconnection fee is also seen as
a deterrent to customers who have been delinquent in
settling their electricity bills, while it noted that it
was last granted an adjustment on its reconnection
charges in 1987, or about 20 years ago.
Apart
from reconnection fees, Meralco is also seeking a meter
accuracy field testing fee of P780 for those with
single-phase meters and P1,200 for those with
three-phase meters, which are also applicable to
residential and general-service customers. There are
currently no charges imposed on this service being
rendered by the utility company. |
