MORE to charge higher rates, PECO warns

MORE Electric and Power Co. (MORE) will have to significantly increase monthly rates if it plans to follow through with its P1-billion investment plan within the year, especially due to its “ill-considered” purchases, Panay Electric Co. (PECO) said.

A total of 57,000 smart meter units are required to serve all of Iloilo at a cost of P3,500 each.

MORE, which has been purportedly replacing meters without consumers’ permission, has purchased outdated GE i210 units which cost approximately twice the price of Panay Electric Company’s (PECO) new EDMI NC30 digital smart meters and require much greater manpower to operate, because they have no remote reading and must be read manually.

“With manual reading, the human factor often results in inaccuracies that lead to questionable billings. With PECO’s smart meters that operate without human intervention, the customers can monitor their usage and are billed for the exact amount of electricity they consume, leaving no room for dishonesty and corruption,” PECO Head of Public Engagement and Government Affairs Marcelo Cacho said.

The recently announced investment, which is close to half of what MORE initially promised last year, pales in comparison to the P7 billion they would need to build a fully functioning power grid that could distribute power to Iloilo, according to Cacho.

“MORE told Congress that they would build their own system if we couldn’t agree on the price of our assets, and now they are low-balling their investment promises” he added.

“They were never really committed to spending that much of their own money, they just planned to steal our system from day one.”

Originally, MORE said that it will set aside P1.7 billion to upgrade facilities such as system reliability projects, system loss reduction projects, system capacity projects, and safety improvement projects. It is currently uncertain which aspects of the distribution system will be sacrificed due to the drastic budget reduction.

“You can’t even build a basic power system capable of servicing Iloilo for that amount,” Cacho said. “This is why they are desperately trying to confuse consumers to re-apply for their power connection with them. They will have to get the money somewhere to cover the costs, and of course it’s going to come from the consumers.”

It was revealed in a hearing last Wednesday that the Energy Regulatory Commission’s (ERC) announcement that it will grant MORE Provisional Authority was based on MORE’s misrepresentation and failure to supply correct and updated information.

A Provisional Authority would only allow MORE to operate and maintain the facilities. However, it cannot legally conduct business operations, such as collecting payments, until it has been officially granted a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN).

During the hearing, the ERC’s Hearing Officer, Atty. Ma. Corazon Gines, officially confirmed that MORE had not been granted a CPCN, but a Provisional Authority, as the company’s application is still pending.

According to PECO legal counsel Atty. Estrella Elamparo, this means that MORE is attempting to charge consumers for usage of assets that still belong to PECO.

It was also revealed that PECO is the only power provider in Iloilo that is registered with the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), meaning whatever payments that MORE tries to collect would be for power that PECO had, in fact, purchased.

Furthermore, Elamparo noted that there is still a pending case regarding the constitutionality of the expropriation that was elevated to the Supreme Court, which she says should prevent the case from moving forward until this is resolved.

“We warn those who continue to disregard and pre-empt the Supreme Court’s decision on the issue of constitutionality that all this may turn out to be a useless and expensive exercise,” she stressed. “If the expropriation is declared unconstitutional, then they had done nothing but deprive Iloilo of stability.”