Philippines' Meralco Customers To Pay Less In March
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
MANILA (Dow Jones)--Manila Electric Co. (MERB.PH), or Meralco, said Monday that its customers will be paying less for electricity in March as a result of increased power supply from independent power producers, or IPPs, in February.
In a statement, the Philippines' largest power distributor by sales said customers will pay PHP0.0823 less for every kilowatt-hour in their March bills.
Meralco said the increase in the amount of electricity supplied by IPPs translated into a cost reduction of PHP0.17-PHP0.36/kWh.
It said further savings could be passed on to consumers in the future if the IPPs could dispatch more of their electricity to Meralco. Delivery of electricity is affected by transmission line capacity.
The power distributor also sources electricity from state utility National Power Corp. (NAP.YY), whose power rates are higher. In February, Meralco purchased more than 52% of its electricity supply from Napocor.
Meralco said that in February, Napocor's power rate was PHP0.21/kWh higher than those of IPPs. The transmission cost of IPPs was also lower compared to that of Napocor by PHP0.473/kWh.
As a result of this, Meralco said its system loss charge for March will be down slightly from February.
Meralco serves more than 4.2 million customers in the Philippine capital and neighboring provinces that together account for half of the country's gross domestic product
posted by philpower @ 7:03 AM,
