Customers of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) will see a rise in their electric bills this month as the power distributor announces an increase in its rates by ₱0.63 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for the August billing.
The movement made Meralco’s overall household rate ₱13.2703 per kWh, up by ₱0.6268 from the previous month’s ₱12.6435 per kWh. A typical household consuming 200 kWh would see an increase of about ₱126 in its monthly bill.
The company attributed this adjustment mainly to higher generation charges, which increased by ₱0.3749 per kWh, resulting from soaring costs from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM).
Charges from Independent Power Producers surged by ₱0.9476 per kWh, more or less because of the almost ₱2 drop in value of the Philippine peso against the US dollar, its weakest level since the start of the year.
According to Meralco, around 99% of the costs from IPPs are dollar-denominated amounts, making the peso’s decline factor in the increase.
On the other hand, WESM charges increased by ₱0.4582 per kWh, owing to the Luzon grid being subjected to an additional 400 MW of average outage capacity.
Meralco reminded customers that the bulk of any electricity bill will be composed of generation charges passed on to consumers, without any markup, reflecting the actual costs consumed from suppliers.
