BUSINESS
Meralco announces cut for August bills
Meralco said they are hoping that the downward adjustment will bring relief to Meralco customers, especially with the lower overall demand observed in the Luzon grid as earlier reported by Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines.
The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) announced that there will be a reduction in customers’ electricity bills this August with the start of implementation of the refund that was recently approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).
In a statement on Sunday, the country’s largest private-sector electric distribution utility said that for residential customers, the refund is equivalent to P0.59 per kWh that will be added to the ongoing refund already being implemented by Meralco.
“We expect that this will be enough to offset other upward adjustments in the August bills, which include (1) the significant increase in reserve market prices to be charged by NGCP (National Grid Corporation of the Philippines), (2) the higher feed-in tariff allowance (FIT-All) to be collected from all electricity end-users starting this month, and (3) the ERC-approved collection of pass-through under recoveries,” it said.
Meralco said they are hoping that the downward adjustment will bring relief to Meralco customers, especially with the lower overall demand observed in the Luzon grid as earlier reported by Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines.
“In the meantime, we encourage the public to continue practicing energy efficiency measures,” Meralco further stressed.
Earlier, the ERC ordered Meralco to implement a P9.5-billion refund to over eight million customers over six months, reducing residential power bills by roughly P100 or about P0.58 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
The refund will appear as a separate line item in customers’ monthly electricity bills labeled “AWAT (Refund)/Collect.” Meralco was also directed to submit monthly implementation reports to the ERC until the refund has been fully completed.
The cases stemmed from applications filed by Meralco seeking confirmation of its Actual Weighted Average Tariff against its previously approved distribution rates for the periods January to June 2025 and July to December 2025. The applications were filed pursuant to ERC resolutions requiring private distribution utilities operating under performance-based regulation to undergo a true-up process for their lapsed regulatory periods.