Meralco bills go up this month

ELECTRIC consumers will pay again higher electricity bills this December  as the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) will implement a power rate increase.

In a statement issued on Monday,  overall rate for a typical household consuming 200kWh increased to P9.8623 per kWh this December from last month’s P9.5579 per kWh. The adjustment of P0.3044 per kWh will mean an increase of around P61 in the typical household’s total electricity bill.

Despite the adjustment, electricity rate this month is still around P0.70 per kWh lower than in April 2019.

From P5.0317 per kWh last month, the generation charge for December increased to P5.1967 per kWh, an upward adjustment of P0.1650 per kWh.

Charges from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) increased by P1.0799 per kWh driven by tighter supply conditions in the Luzon grid. As a result, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the Luzon Grid on Yellow Alert on two occasions.  The average capacity on outage in November increased by 525 MW because of scheduled and forced outages of some power plants and the natural gas supply restriction of Malampaya onshore gas plant implemented by SPEX from November 10 to 14. The share of WESM to Meralco’s supply needs was reduced to 10%.