IN LAST week’s article, I reported that on April 30, 2015, Panay Electric Co., Inc. (PECO) applied to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) for P128.4 million to be refunded to PECO by its customers for alleged undercharging by PECO over the period Jan. 1, 2012 to Dec. 31, 2014.
After careful evaluation, ERC replied to PECO: ‘au contraire’, in fact you owe your hapless consumers P527.8 million’.
What is this? Amateur night?
I always thought that beancounters, although boring, knew how to get their sums right.
Why the discrepancy of P656.2 million?
PECO purchased electricity from Panay Power Corp. (PPC) and from Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC) and sold the electricity to its consumers. Surely, there should be no serious discrepancy between the cost of electricity PECO purchased, and the revenue it obtained from the consequential sales to its consumers. PECO needs to cover its costs but consumers should not be exploited.
What has gone wrong?
There is worse to come. ERC has directed PECO to file its consolidated applications for confirmation and approval its calculations of (over) or under recoveries in the implementation of automatic cost adjustments and true-up mechanisms for the period January 2015 to December 2019. ERC filed this request on Dec. 28, 2020.
As far as I am aware, PECO has yet to provide its response.
We consumers deserve better.
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For a long time, I have been concerned about the prices PECO’s consumers were being billed.
Well before Jan. 1, 2012, I expressed concern about what I called ‘sweetheart’ deals between PECO and its suppliers which I believe could be not in the interest of PECO’s consumers. At the time, I received a reply from an attorney, not apparently representing PECO, which objected to my use of the term ‘sweetheart’. Nevertheless, the cost per kilowatt hour increased steadily on a monthly basis.
Be that as it may. But it now seems that we are heading towards an imbroglio in which PECO’s consumers have not demonstrably been treated fairly.
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On Dec. 26, 2010, Jose Rene Almendras, energy secretary, opened the Visayan Wholesale Energy Spot Market (WESM) in Cebu. He mentioned that the market would soon become extremely active where many buyers and sellers would come together to buy and sell electricity. This has turned out to be true and the dynamic market created has generally produced trading prices which are more advantageous to the consumer than the bilateral contracts that local electricity distributors (PECO in Iloilo, and Ceneco in Bacolod) negotiated.
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Consumers are not being treated fairly and it is high time that this unsatisfactory situation is rectified./PN
