The continued drop in fuel cost is expected to bring down the cost of power this month, the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said on Tuesday.
Meralco Spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga said generation charge, the biggest component of an electricity bill, is likely to decline this month.
“There is a possibility of lower generation cost based on our initial analysis and primarily this may be due to lower effective price of fuel cost and lower incidence of plant outages,” Zaldarriaga said.
The utility firm will provide final figures within the week.
In December Meralco customers saw a P0.19-per-kilowatt-hour (kWh) drop in their electricity bills, equivalent to roughly P38 for those with an average monthly consumption of 200 kWh.
This as generation charge fell by P0.17 per kWh to P4.94 per kWh, the lowest level for 2014.
The reduction in the generation charge was mainly driven by lower charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), which registered a reduction of P1.70 per kWh due to the normal operations of the power plants during the November supply month. The supply situation in Luzon improved especially after Sual’s Unit 1, with 647 megawatts, came back online after a monthlong maintenance shutdown in October.
Also, WESM charges decreased due to the completion in October of adjustments from prior months, which include additional Must-Run Unit compensation for Malaya and the secondary cap additional compensation for the supply months of May and June 2014. These account for around P0.09 of the P0.17-per- kWh decrease in generation charge this month.
The lower WESM charges offset the P0.10-per-kWh and P0.03-per-kWh increases in the average rates of the independent power producers (IPPs) and power plants covered by power supply agreements (PSAs), respectively.
In terms of share to Meralco’s total power requirements for the November supply month, WESM, IPPs, and PSAs accounted for 4 percent, 43 percent and 53 percent, respectively.