CASURECO II jacks up power rate

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A local electric cooperative serving one of the largest coverage areas in terms of consumers in the province of Camarines Sur gears for a whopping increase in power rate charges.

The Camarines Sur II electric cooperative will arbitrarily increase its rates from P11.50 per kilowatt hour in November to P15.30/kwh in December for its residential consumers.

Coop spokesperson Emmanuel Rojo said “this happens because the power rate was jacked up by expensive price of power from the spot market with the highest rate of P62/kwh.”

The current electric sourcing predicament, the coop points out, was due to the simultaneous shutdown of power sources in the Luzon grid.

The shutdown of major power suppliers BacMan and Masinloc power plants forced Casureco II to buy its power supply from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), a trading entity for power distributors.

Rojo said Masinloc, which had an unplanned shutdown from Nov. 11 to Dec. 10, provided 50 percent of power supply, and BacMan that shutdown as scheduled on Oct 16-Dec. 15 contributed 40 percent to the total power requirement of Casureco II areas.

Rojo said that before the shutdown of Masinloc and BacMan, the power coop only bought 10 percent of the power supply from WESM but now it has totally relied on the spot market that sells P9.46/kwh.

He said the power supply and power rate will normalize in February 2014. (With report from John Mark Escandor)

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