Member-consumer-owners (MCO) serviced by the Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) electricity grid will see a drop in bills for the month of February as the overall rates have dipped.
The total rate for electricity for BENECO consumers has dropped from P10.1251 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to P9.6153, according to the latest available cost matrix on the cooperative’s official website, updated for February rates, a net drop of roughly half a peso per kWh for residential accounts.
However, according to BENECO’s rates analyst Ivory Pataan, the February rate is at P9.9796, still lower than the January rate but by less.
The price drop, according to the matrix, is attributed to downticks in generation, transmission energy, and system loss charges, as well as certain portions of value-added taxes (VAT).
The rate decrease also carries across to all account types across the board, with commercial, industrial, and public buildings belonging to the government all expected to see drops in electric bills in the month.
Another factor cited in the drop in prices was the reduction of the number of lifeline rate beneficiaries following the implementation of Republic Act 11552, which reduced the amount of lifeline rate subsidy being collected from the co-op’s non-lifelines.
Lifeline rates are for qualified, impoverished consumers who require socialized assistance, drawn from the MCO network in the form of lifeline rate subsidies, which are charged from all users to fund the lifeline rate beneficiaries’ electricity connections.
BENECO’s Lifeline Rate beneficiaries of 80,794 in December 2023 decreased to only 861 in January 2024.
According to the BENECO non-network services department (NNSD), the cooperative was expecting an increase in rates rather than a decrease after the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) ordered the resumption of collection of feed-in-tariff allocations (FIT-ALLs) nationwide, amounting to P0.0364 per kWh.
The tariff is remitted to the National Transmission Corporation (TRANSCO), creating a fund that can be utilized by eligible renewable energy developers.
