Power retailer Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) expects demand to increase by about 900 megawatts (MW) during the dry months this year, an executive said Thursday.
“On the increase in demand from first quarter to the summer season, this 2025, we project an increase of around 900 MW in demand in the Meralco service area,” Meralco vice president and head of utility economics Lawrence Fernandez said.
Fernandez said Meralco could invite suppliers or generation companies to meet their supply requirement during the dry months through emergency power supply agreements.
Fernandez said two supply contracts of Meralco expired at the end of 2024, while two contracts of AC Energy Corp. were also terminated.
“In our generation charge for February, we can see that two contracts that were signed in 2019 have expired. They were five-year contracts. They started in 2020 and by the end of 2024, and they have expired. On top of that, there are also two contracts from AC Energy that were terminated so we are looking at trying to replace those capacities especially for summer,” he said.
Meralco is the country’s biggest power distributor with over 8 million customers in its franchise area.
Meanwhile, Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) assistant manager Chris Warren Manalo said they expect power rates to remain stable given the cooler temperatures and lower demand in February.
IEMOP is the operator of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) where demand usually goes up during the dry months due to high temperatures and increased demand, translating into higher electricity prices.
“And then for the summer months, what we can see especially, it is just a supply and demand condition…Last year, there was an abrupt temperature increase. But what we can see, if the temperatures are hotter in the summer months, we can see that there will be an increase in demand. So therefore, there are increase in the prices during summer months,” Manalo said.
