NEPC September rate dips to PHP 14.2487 under price cap

By Glazyl M. Jopson

BACOLOD CITY — The Negros Electric Power Corporation (NEPC) announced Tuesday that its residential electricity rate for September will be PHP 14.2487 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), slightly lower than the PHP 14.2787/kWh rate in August.

The PHP 0.03/kWh reduction is the first monthly adjustment since the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) imposed a regional price cap on the spot market.

In a press briefing, Joe-Mel Zaporteza, NEPC vice president and chief operating officer, said the release of the monthly bill covering Aug. 16 to Sept. 16 was delayed. The Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) provided the recomputed average price using the secondary price cap only on Monday.

Without the price cap, the September rate would have reached PHP 17.8337/kWh, or PHP 3.585/kWh higher, according to Zaporteza.

NEPC attributed the minimal reduction to the Regional Secondary Price Cap (SPC) that the ERC imposed on the Visayas and Mindanao spot market.

How the cap works

The mechanism is triggered when the rolling average price across the Philippine grid exceeds a prescribed threshold.

Once activated, the cap is calculated and applied separately to each region based on that region’s rolling average price.

Zaporteza said supply shortages drove up spot-market prices, prompting the implementation of the secondary price cap.

However, the cap applies only to the 23% of NEPC’s power supply that comes from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM).

About 75% comes from NEPC’s power supply agreements, while the remaining 2% comes from net-metering exports. Neither source is covered by the cap.

Consumers who maintain the same level of electricity consumption as the previous month may see a slight reduction in their total bills this month.

Zaporteza said electricity rates in the coming months will depend on market conditions.

“In the succeeding month, power rates depend on how the market behaves. We’ll see,” he said.

Spot prices cut by more than half

Under ERC Memorandum Circular No. 2026-048, IEMOP was directed to recalculate August 2026 WESM costs using the Regional SPC to help curb surging electricity prices in the Visayas and Mindanao.

The measure lowered the average August WESM price in the Visayas from PHP 18.59/kWh to PHP 8.47/kWh, a 54% reduction.

In Mindanao, the average rate fell from PHP 19.56/kWh to PHP 8.69/kWh, a 56% reduction.

The cap kept NEPC’s September rate PHP 3.585/kWh below what it would otherwise have been. However, because it covers less than a quarter of the utility’s supply, the more-than-half cut in regional spot prices translated into a residential rate only PHP 0.03/kWh lower than August’s.

NEPC is the private distribution utility that took over the franchise area of the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (CENECO), which serves Bacolod City and neighboring localities.