Meralco offers rate cut of P0.18
Thursday, April 27, 2006
(Manila Standard Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Manila Electric Co., the country's largest power distributor, yesterday said consumers will save an average of P0.18 per kilowatthour if independent power producers are allowed to operate at their minimum contracted level.
Meralco president Jesus Francisco told reporters during the Economic Journalist Association of the Philippines business forum that the price reduction would be achieved if the distributors' IPPs were contracted at 83 percent.Meralco's IPPs are First Gen Corp.'s Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo power plants, Quezon Power Philippines Ltd. and Duracom Power.
"We proposed that we be allowed to really optimize the plant of National Power Corp. by maximizing what we will draw from it at night, which is cheaper, so that we can optimize our IPPs to run higher at daytime," Francisco said.He said since Meralco had agreed to give large industrial and commercial customers the choice of determining their own suppliers, they proposed to optimize the use of their IPPs.
Commercial and industrial users account for 25 percent of Meralco's total customers while residential customers share the remaining 75 percent."We have to look what is in the best interest of our consumers... we are really looking at optimization to see if we can get the best of both worlds," he said.
Meralco obtains between 53 percent and 54 percent of its electricity requirements from Napocor and the rest from its own IPPs.Francisco said with the higher utilization of its IPPs, Meralco would likely get about 46 percent of its electricity requirements from Napocor and reduce rates by P0.18 per kwh.
posted by philpower @ 8:36 AM,
