Power rate hikes also hit Luzon

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

DAGUPAN CITY—Households and businesses in Pangasinan and Baguio City should brace for higher electricity costs starting this month as power cooperatives in these areas start to feel the pinch of the high cost charged by their suppliers.

The biggest rate increase would be charged by the Pangasinan Electric Cooperative (Panelco) III, which services eastern Pangasinan province, at P5.6 per kilowatt hour (kWh), including value added tax (VAT) and other taxes.

Elenita Bautista, manager of Panelco III’s institutional services department, said the increase would be included in their customers’ December bills, increasing the cooperative’s P9.8 per kWh charge to P15.4 per kWh.

Panelco, Bautista said, has been distributing leaflets to households and businesses in its coverage area to explain the increase.

In Dagupan City, Dominador Liwag, retail services manager of the Dagupan Electric Power Corp. (Decorp), said the increase in rates in December and January was due to the shutdown of power-generating companies for scheduled maintenance of their equipment. The shutdown, he said, resulted in reduced power supply.

Liwag said Decorp, which services central Pangasinan towns, would increase its rates by P1.98 per kWh.

But Liwag said the company would split the increase and collect only P1 per kWh in December and the rest starting January next year.

Liwag said the company’s power suppliers had increased their rates for the billing period covering Oct. 26 to Nov. 25 but Decorp chose to delay the rate hike and collect this in tranches “in the spirit of Christmas.”

“We are just passing on to the customers the amount charged by the power-generating companies,” Liwag said.

Decorp’s current rate is P9.85 per kWh, including taxes.

Liwag, however, said the rates would go down by February when power supply starts to normalize.

Rodrigo Corpuz, general manager of the Central Pangasinan Electric Cooperative (Cenpelco), said consumers should not worry because their rates had gone down by 5 centavos per kWh.

Corpuz said Cenpelco gets its power supply from the Sual power plant in Sual town, which had no scheduled maintenance activities.

In Baguio City, the summer capital’s power distributor also announced a 3-percent hike (26 centavos per kWh) in power consumed by households, and a 4-percent increase (34 centavos per kWh) for commercial establishments because power-generating firms have raised the price of electricity that is sold through the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) in December.

The Benguet Electric Cooperative (Beneco), which distributes electricity to Baguio and 13 towns in Benguet province, has been forced to raise the household rates from P8.8 per kWh to P9 per kWh, said Brenda Carling, Beneco customer services manager.

Commercial establishments would now be charged P8.4 per kWh from the previous month’s charge of P8 per kWh, she said. Yolanda Sotelo and Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon