The Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC) has finished recalculating the prices of electricity at the spot market for November and December 2013 during the Malampaya facility shutdown. PEMC president Melinda Ocampo says based on the recalculated amount, the November prices should have only been P6 per kilowatt hour instead of the more than P25 per kwh earlier billed to Meralco which helped pushed generation charges for that period to P4.15 per kwh, which was eventually halted by the Supreme Court. For December prices, instead of the P28 per kwh spot prices, the recalculated amount is just over P6 per kwh. Ocampo said the newly recalculated rates will be used starting tomorrow's billing of the distribution utilities and cooperatives in Luzon and Visayas. As for the impact of this recalculated amount to the bill of utilities and power producers, the November period where the spot market's increase amounted to P2.15 would now go down to P0.43. For the December bill, the P2.50 attributable to WESM prices would go down to P0.19. For Meralco consumers, this would mean that the increase of P4.15 per kwh in December would go down to P2.43 per kwh. For January, the increase of P5.33 per kwh would instead go down to P3.02 per kwh. However, the PEMC said Meralco will still have the final say on what increases would be implemented for the generation charge for December and January billings. Alvin Elchico reports. ANC Dateline Philippines. March 18, 2014
