• CHERYL G. CRUZ
Member-consumers of the Central Negros Electric Cooperative will pay P11.9566 for each kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed, this billing month of April, or an increase of P1.7287/kWh, from last month’s residential rate of P10.2279/kWh.
Atty. Arnel Lapore, acting general manager of Ceneco, said the increase is mainly due to the P2.5264/kWh hike in the price of electricity in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market.
From last month’s P5.5616/kWh, the cost of electricity in the spot market stood at P8.0879kWh.
Pass-through charges, equivalent to P10.77/kWh of the total electricity rate, include the generation and transmission charges, ERC-approved adjustments, and government subsidies and taxes, Lapore said in a press release.
He added that “only P1.1866/kWh of the electricity rate goes to Ceneco through the Distribution, Supply, Metering (DSM) charges for its administrative and operational services, and as Reinvestment Fund for Sustainable Capex.”
Ceneco, meanwhile, said that, as per notice from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, Manual Load Dropping, or rotational brownouts, is possible tonight, April 17, in Bacolod and neighboring areas.
The Visayas grid is on red alert status, from 5-9 o’clock tonight, due to the reduced output of the MVIP (Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Project), brought about by the tripping of the 138-megawatt capacity GNPK 2 and of the 135MW SMCPC U2, the NGCP said in its advisory.
A red alert status is issued when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement.
Yesterday morning, the NGCP issued a yellow alert in the Visayas grid from 1-10 p.m., saying that 13 power plants are on forced outage, while five others are “running on derated capacities, for a total of 698MW unavailable to the grid.” | CGC
