Electricity grid rate tipped to rise in Feb
Transmission rates may increase next month as electricity superhighway National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) will start collecting money spent for standby power capacity last summer.
NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza said the group was just waiting for the official computation of rate impact from the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (Iemop).
Iemop serves as the operator of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), an avenue where power is traded between producers and distributors to boost their supply, with rates seen to be costlier during the hotter months. Power generation firms also sell their reserves at the “reserve market,” another platform integrated into the WESM.
Energy players can rely on reserves or ancillary services to address higher power demand and avoid power interruptions.
“In the next NGCP billing statement that will be given to customers next month, we will see the collection of 70 percent of the AS (ancillary service) charge that was not billed by generators from the March 2024 billing period,” she told reporters in a briefing on Wednesday.
In December, the Energy Regulatory Commission gave the green light for power generators to recover a total of P3.05 billion, which represents the remaining 70-percent reserve trading amounts. The commission earlier suspended the collection of amounts in the reserve market following the surge in prices.
Weaker consumption
Collection for consumers in Luzon and Mindanao will be done in three months. Installments for those in the Visayas, meanwhile, can be divided into six months.
For January, overall transmission charges in electricity bills are also expected to rise as energy consumption weakened in December amid colder weather, according to Julian Ryan Datingaling, NGCP’s head of revenue management department.
“NGCP’s revenue is fixed. Consumption dictates rates. So when energy consumption decreases, given that the revenue is fixed, the tendency is that rates will increase,” he said.
Manila Electric Co., the country’s largest power distributor, announced earlier this week lower power rates following a slash in generation costs.
