BAGUIO CITY – Member-consumer-owners (MCOs) of the Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) will be realizing slight increase in their January power bills following the reported increase in the generation and transmission charges, two of the pass through charges from the independent power generators and the transmission company, respectively,.
From the P7.6311/kwh charged to residential consumers last December, BENECO will be charging them P7.8367/kwh in their January power bills because of the reported adjustments.
On the other hand, low voltage commercial consumers will be charged P7.1005/kwh for their January power bills compared to the P6.8845/kwh charged to them by the electric cooperative last month.
The generation charge that was reflected in the January power bills of consumers is P3.9599/kwh compared to the P3.8788/kwh last December while the transmission charge for the current bill is P0.7633/kwh compared to the previous P0.7319/kwh last December.
BENECO remits the collected generation charge to the commissioned independent power producer while the transmission charge is also remitted to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).
For January, industrial consumers will be charged P7.0691/kwh compared to the P6.8532/kwh that was charged to the same by the electric cooperative last month.
Moreover, the consumption of public buildings will be billed P7.0727/kwh compared to the previous charge of 6.8568/kwh.
Subsequently, the consumption of streetlights will be billed P7.1005/kwh compared to the previous billing of P6.8845 last December.
High voltage commercial consumers will be charged P5.6154/kwh in January compared to the P5.4450/kwh last month.
For high voltage public buildings, their consumption will be billed P5.5876/kwh compared to the previous billing of P5.4173/kwh.
The pass through charges such as the generation, transmission among other similarly situated charges are beyond the control of rural electric cooperatives as the same are dictated by outside factors that are already out of the control of the cooperatives.
However, the pass on charges such as the distribution, supply and metering (DSM) is regulated by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).
Despite the slight increase in the power rates due to factors that are outside the control of the electric cooperative, BENECO remains to be one of the power distribution utilities that have the cheapest power rates which are even much lower compared to the charges of high private public distribution companies.
Power industry experts noted that the energy sector was one of the heavily impacted businesses last year because of the implementation of the various levels of community quarantine that caused a drastic reduction in the consumption of commercial and industrial consumers but the situation is gradually getting back the appropriate momentum with the resumption of economic activities in most parts of the country over the past several months. By HENT