BY BOY RYAN B. ZABAL
The Aklan Electric
Cooperative, Inc. (Akelco) faced a barrage of consumer complaints about
electric billing statements this month of June.
Household and commercial consumers vent their
dissatisfaction against Akelco in local radio stations and social networking
site Facebook of their high electricity bills.
In their June billing, electric
consumers apparently were surprised of the rate increase from P11.4298 per kilowatt-hour
(kWh) to P12.6067 kWh for residential consumers consuming 21 kilowatt per hour and
up or an increase of P1.765 kWh.
Commercial and industrial
establishments were also paying an additional P1.1753 kWh from P10.4850 kWh in the month of May to
P11.6602 kWh.
Rence Oczon, public information
officer of Akelco, said the electricity rate hike is due to increase cost of
generation charges from Akelco’s power suppliers, the systems loss and the significant
increase of consumption during hot summer months.
In the official rate
advisory, the power distributor also cited the higher power prices from Wholesale
Electricity Spot Market (WESM) from which Akelco sourced its power requirements,
attributed to the rising electricity charges.
Akelco gets power from its
bilateral contracts with independent power producers and WESM for an average
generation cost of P6.4163 kWh from January to April.
WESM prices are influenced
by the peso-dollar exchange rate, cost of fuel used in power generation and the
supply and demand conditions, which are also beyond the control of power supply
distributor such as Akelco.
Alice, housewife with
three children in Kalibo, was caught off-guard when she saw her latest Akelco
bill rose to P4,000 from P1,998 for almost the same household electricity
consumption of the previous month of May.
“Lahat yata tumaas na ang
presyo, it has more than doubled,” she said.
The generation charge
accounts for 63 percent of her electric bill while the residential distribution
charge makes up 4.5 percent of the total charges.
Alice needs to pay an
additional P2,000, which is enough to pay her telephone, water and cable bills
for the month of June.
In an interview, Oczon has
encouraged the electric consumers to call or visit the Akelco main office or
sub-offices to assist them on how to compute on how much electricity their household
appliances consumed.
Akelco consumers, she
said, may opt to review their billing records of electric service and to report
also defective electric meters installed in their premises.
Earlier, the sole power
distributor in Aklan and the northern towns of Antique has reminded the consumers
to use electricity wisely and to conserve energy consumption.
Me to Akelco... Pweh!!!
ReplyDeletebkit ganun biglang taas ung bill namn 983 to 3328 . grabi amn po ..
ReplyDeletebkit ganun biglang taas ung bill namn 983 to 3328 . grabi amn po ..
ReplyDelete