Meralco passing on final P0.5453/kWh hike in March electric bills.

The final rate hike to be passed on by power utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco to its residential customers this month will be at P0.5453 per kilowatt hour (kWh); bringing its overall tariff to P11.4348 per kWh from P10.8895 per kWh in the February billing cycle.

The utility firm emphasized that households in the 200-kWh consumption level will have to bear aggregate P109 increase in their electric bills this month.

The bulk of cost component in its upward adjustment will be from its generation charge at P0.4636 per kWh, hence, jacking up that rate item to P7.3790 per kWh from P6.9154 per kWh in the prior month.

The main trigger to the generation charge hike, according to Meralco, had been the higher charges when the gas-fired power plants shifted to liquid fuel usage because of the Malampaya gas production facility's shutdown on February 4-18.

Apart from that, settlement prices at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) were also on uptick; in addition to Meralco's procurement of costlier emergency power supply from the Dinginin plant - although the latter still needs to go through the approval of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) prior to pass-on.

As emphasized by Atty. Jose Ronald V. Valles, first vice president and head of Regulatory Management Office of Meralco, "this month's generation charge increase would have been significantly higher, but we took the initiative to cushion the impact in the bills of our customers by coordinating with some of our suppliers to defer collection...