Central Negros Electric Cooperative, Inc. informed its electricity consumers that the average residential rate for the billing month of January 2022 is P7.5990/kWh, a decrease of P1.1771/kWh from last month’s rate of P8.7761/kWh.

The P1.1771/kWh rate decrease can be attributed to the reduction in generation, transmission and system loss charges, implementation of August 2021 WESM power bill reduction amounting to 183.225M net of VAT due to Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) letter dated September 20, 2021 to mitigate the impact of the outage of Cebu-Negros submarine cable, implementation of Over/Under Recovery Decision with ERC Case No. 2021-031 CF for the next 12 months, implementation of RPT Recovery amounting to P12.5M, as well as other pass-through charges such as Lifeline, Senior and VAT.

The pass-through charges equivalent to P6.4124/kWh of the total power rate include the generation and transmission charges, ERC-approved adjustments, government subsidies, and taxes. Only P1.1866/kWh of the power rate goes to Ceneco through Distribution, Supply, Metering (DSM) Charges and Reinvestment Fund for Sustainable CAPEX (RFSC) for its administrative and operational services. Since 2010, Ceneco’s DSM and RFSC rate has not increased.

For every kWh consumed by residential consumers, roughly 10 to 14 percent of the total bill amount goes to Ceneco. Thus, in monitoring the monthly electricity usage, consumers are advised to look at their kilowatt-hour consumption and not on the bill amount since it varies depending on the pass-through charges as shown above.

Ceneco Board and Management continue to remind its electricity consumers to conserve energy to avoid paying high electricity bills./WDJ