Beneco starts new power bill harge

By Carlito Dar

BAGUIO CITY – The Benguet Electric Coop. has added new charge to electric bills of consumers to fund continuous power supply, protection of environment and develop renewable energy sources.

Beneco rate analyst Rowina Allison Damian said Fit-All or the Feed-in Tariff Allowance was added to electric consumers’ bill starting this month under  Energy Regulatory Commission order last Oct. 28, 2014 pursuant to Republic Act 9513 or the Renewable Act of 2008.

Damian said the new line item in the electric bill will charge P 0.0406 per kilowatt hour of electric consumption.

“Fit-All is a uniform charge imposed on all on-grid consumers and is essential to implementation of the FIT System as established under the Renewable Act of 2008. For Beneco, we only act as collecting agent (just like other distribution utilities) and we will provide the billing, collection and the remittance report as may be required by ERC or the administrator,” she  said.

Damian said Beneco’s electricity rate (residential) remains among lowest in the country. Its 2014 average charge of around P8.80 per kilowatt hour ranked third lowest in North and Central Luzon (regions 1, 2, 3 and CAR) and the lowest among their counterparts in the other Cordillera provinces.

“Beneco’s pass-on rates such as distribution, supply and metering charges remain almost the same since 2011 and what is varying the cost of electricity for our consumers are the pass-through charges such as the generation, transmission, system-loss and universal charge, the VAT and now the FIT-ALL, which we only bill, collect and remit to other agencies like the NGCP, TRANSCO, ERC and BIR,” she said.

Damian also bared a decrease in power rate for Beneco last January  compared to  the December billing saying from computation of P827. 90 for a residential consumer with monthly consumption of 100Kwh, it will go down  to P781.33 or a savings of P46.57.

Beneco power supply specialist engineer Mario Gayao, reported aside from continuously analyzing wholesale electricity spot market prices, Beneco’s lower rate is also due to their contract with Team Energy that was forged  even before WESM was established.