The power supply shortage that has triggered rotational brownouts in Luzon in recent weeks jacked up electricity costs for residential customers of electric cooperatives by an average of P1.30 per kilowatt-hour in June alone.
“Distribution utilities needed to buy electricity from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) to address these power outages, and in most cases, electricity from the market is more expensive than the supply sourced through contracts with generation companies,” said Kenjie Fagyan, Philippine Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (Philreca) regulatory affairs officer, in a statement.
Philreca said 26 or about three in every five of its members in Luzon c…
Keep on reading: Electric co-op rates up as firms forced to buy more expensive power