High electric bills alarm Akelco consumers

BY BOY RYAN B. ZABAL

Here is another bad news. 

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.