The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said Wednesday consumers can expect an increase in transmission charges in their March 2025 electric bills on higher ancillary services (AS) rates.
NGCP said in a statement transmission wheeling rates, or what the company charges for its primary service of delivering power, went down by 3.14 percent to P0.5252 per kilowatt-hour in February from P0.5422 per kWh in January.
AS rates for the February increased 5.05 percent with P0.6975 per kWh compared to P0.6640 per kWh in January, which included the second tranche of the settlement of the remaining 70 percent AS cost from the reserve market for the March 2024 billing period whose recovery was deferred by the ERC.
Ancillary service charges pertain to the cost for AS sourced from the reserve market and those for AS providers with bilateral contracts with NGCP.
Meanwhile, NGCP asked energy stakeholders to strictly monitor and ensure the availability of power in the coming months, following a surge in demand due to exceptionally high heat indices in recent days and unplanned outages of critical power plants.
“We are still, of course, working with the rest of the industry players. We will also be meeting with the generators in the coming week or so to ensure that our supply, our supply-demand will be stable during the summer. So we will commit to revert to you once that coordination has finished,”NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Perez-Alabanza said.
NGCP said the highest peak demand for the year was recorded on March 6, 2025 at 12,467 MW, a 5-percent increase from the Department of Energy-approved Green Operating Program forecast demand of 11,870 MW for that day.
The DOE forecasted a peak of 14,769 MW for Luzon to occur mid-May this year, a 5.37-percent increase from the 2024 actual peak of 14,016 MW on April 24, 2024.
It said that hot weather conditions caused a spike in demand on March 5, but the unavailability of GNPD1 (668 megawatts capacity) among 11 other plants totaling 1,639.3 MW and the deration, or the operation at less than the declared capacity, of 16 other critical power plants, led to the raising of the yellow alert from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the same day.
NGCP said capacity made unavailable because of unplanned outages and deration totaled 3,362.3MW.
It said the implementation of rapid assessment on grid stability, optimization of remaining available power and continuous real-time monitoring and coordination with affected plants prevented the power situation from escalating into a red alert. The yellow alert was lifted by 7:49 p.m. on the same day.
