BAGUIO CITY (PIA) – – A new charge will be added to the consumers’ electric bill starting this January that will be remitted to a fund that will assures continuous power supply and the health and protection of environment through the development of more renewable energy sources.
Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) rate analyst Rowina Allison Damian, in a Kapihan media forum here at the PIA regional office, reports that FIT-ALL or the Feed-in Tariff Allowance will be added on the electric consumer’s bill starting this January 2015.
Damian explains that the said new line item in the electric bill will charge (Php) 0.0406 per kilowatthour of electric consumption and was provisioned under an Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) order last October 28, 2014 and is pursuant to Republic Act 9513 or the Renewable Act of 2008.
“FIT-ALL is a uniform charge imposed on all on-grid consumers and is essential to the implementation of the FIT System as established under the Renewable Act of 2008. For BENECO, we only act as collecting agent (just like the other distribution utilities) and we will provide the billing, collection and the remittance report, as may be required by ERC or the administrator”, she explains.
Meantime, Damian also assures the public that BENECO’s electricity rate (residential) remains to be among the lowest in the country, wherein their 2014 averages charge of around P8.80 per kilowatthour ranked third lowest in North and Central Luzon (regions 1, 2, 3 and CAR) and the lowest among their counterparts in the other Cordillera provinces.
Damian also discloses a decrease in power rate for BENECO this January 2015, compared to that of their December billing, citing that for a residential consumer with monthly consumption of 100Kwh, from their computation of P827.90 it will goes down P781.33 or a savings of P46.57.
“BENECO’s pass-on rates, such as the distribution, supply and metering charges remain almost the same since 2011 and what varying the cost of electricity for our consumers are the pass-through charges such as the generation, transmission, system-loss and universal charge, the VAT and now the FIT-ALL, which we only bill, collect and remit to other agencies like the NGCP, TRANSCO, ERC and BIR”, she explains.
For the lower electricity cost, she also gave credit to the BENECO Power Supply Specialists, headed by Engr. Mario Gayao, who continuously monitor and study the prices on WESM or the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market.
Gayao, in the same forum, also reported that aside from continuously analyzing WESM prices, BENECO’s lower rate is also due to their contract with Team Energy that was forge even before WESM was established. (CCD – PIA CAR)
