THE Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has ordered power distribution utilities to refund the so-called regulatory reset fee that they have been charging consumers since 2015.
ERC chairperson Monalisa Dimalanta said since the government has allocated funds for consultants and these fees were not used all these years, the commission deemed it reasonable to return these to consumers.
The regulator has not yet issued the official list of all private utilities that should implement the refund but these include Meralco, VECO, Davao Light, Cepalco, and many others in major metropolitan areas.
For Meralco, Dimalanta says the refund is around P0.22 kilowatt per hour (kWh) which will be reflected in the February 2025 billing, which may offset the increase due to the recovery of costs incurred by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines for its ancillary services.
The ERC has yet to divulge how much is the respective refund for each private utility in the country.
The regulatory reset fee refund is separate from the earlier refund floated by Meralco due to overcollection from 2022 until the present.
Dimalanta said the commission is still waiting for Meralco to file a petition to refund before deciding on how much is the refund amount, despite an earlier announcement from the utility that it going to refund P16 billion.
But consumer group NASECORE said the ERC should not wait for Meralco to compute the refund amount.
NASECORE president Pete Ilagan said it is the responsibility of the regulator to compute since it also has the data on how much Meralco has over-collected so far.
Meralco has already refunded thrice since 2012 and its current rate has only gone down by a measly P0.03/kWh.
No rate reset has been done by ERC for more than a decade already.
The current leadership has already announced a new rate reset will happen in 2025 but it has yet to announce Meralco’s interim rate while the commission is determining the final average distribution rate for the new regulatory period starting 2025 to December 2028. (ABS-CBN News)
