Delay of refund for Panelco III, Decorp customers seen
THE scheduled payment of refunds owed to customers of the Pangasinan Electric Cooperative III (Panelco) and Dagupan Electric Corporation (Decorp) as ordered by the Energy Regulatory Commission will not happen.
This became evident after the distribution uilities (DU) filed a motion asking for an extended period of recovery or refund from the Philippine Electric Market Corporation (PEMC).
It will be recalled that the ERC ordered the PEMC last March 2014 to refund payments for excess generation charges after recomputation of wholesale electricity spot market (WESM) prices showed that there was overcharging. The refund was supposed to be reflected in the June and July electric bills of the DUs’ (including Panelco III and Decorp) customers.
Panelco III collected P5. 63 per kilowatt hour as generation charge while Decorp initially collected P1.98 per kWH last December 2013 and January this year.
Wilbert Balilia of ERC explained that most of the DUs have paid the generation charges to PEMC but the refunds cannot be paid until PEMC has returned the excess amount it had collected from the DUs or electric companies.
The ERC conceded that given the large number of clients of DUs, the computation of the refund could take time. -Hilda M. Austria
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