MANILA Electric Co. (Meralco) said Sunday that its customers could expect a significant reduction in their June electricity rates, a turnaround from the increase earlier announced.

This, the company said, was due to the implementation of a staggered collection of generation costs from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Marker (WESM), as ordered by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

In its order promulgated on June 13, the ERC ordered all distribution utilities and electric cooperatives in the country, including Meralco, to stagger the collection of charges covering WESM purchases in the May supply month in four equal monthly installments starting this billing month until September 2024.

Due to this, Meralco customers will now see a P1.9623 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) decrease in the electricity rate this June instead of the P0.6436 per kWh increase announced last week.

This brings the overall rate for a typical household to P9.4516 per kWh from the previous month's P11.4139 per kWh.

Moreover, for residential customers consuming 200 kWh, the adjustment is equivalent to a decrease of around P392 in their total electricity bill.

With this change, Meralco said the adjusted rate for June now reflects a P1.8308 per kWh decrease in generation charge.

For the other components, Meralco said the increases in transmission charge and feed-in tariff allowance are retained at P0.1450 per kWh and P0.0474 per kWh, respectively.

Taxes and other charges, meanwhile, have a net reduction of P0.3239 per kWh for the month.

"We ask for the understanding of our customers over the delayed bills as we implement the newly issued order of the ERC. Rest assured that Meralco will implement adjusted due dates to give our customers enough time to pay their bills," Meralco Vice President and Head of Corporate Communications Joe Zaldarriaga said.

However, Meralco said that after this decrease in electricity rates in June, customers should expect higher generation charges in the next three months.

"We would like to advise this early that our customers can expect generation charge to increase in succeeding months as we collect the deferred amounts on a staggered basis as a result of the recent developments," Zaldarriaga said.

"With these already deferred costs and the recent order of the ERC to also stagger the collection of WESM charges, around P0.77 per kWh will be added every month to the generation charge in the July to September bills," he added.

As announced last week, Meralco, Quezon Power (Philippines) Ltd., San Buenaventura Power Ltd. Co., and South Premiere Power Corp. deferred P500 million in generation costs to cushion the impact of higher pass-through charges to Meralco's customers for June.

These will be collected in the next three billing periods, as cleared by the ERC.