Energy

Maybe it’s time to write about energy (electricity) because this month, July, they’re again going to increase the price of electricity.

Why?

Because KEPCO SPC Power which is under contract to sell CENECO at a given rate has a generating unit that has “a furnace tube leak” and has to be switched off. Don’t ask me what is a furnace tube or tell me to describe a leaking furnace tube because honestly I have only a faint idea.

But what is this KEPCO SPC Power Corp? The ordinary CENECO customer has no or very little idea about this outfit. A clue is that its marketing chief is named Kwang Ho Cho, probably Korean or improbably Chinese: not that we give damn about the nationality of this KSPC, as long as it complies with its commitment by not letting its “furnace tube” leak.

The trouble is we have now to buy power from the so-called Wholesale Electricity Spot Market which charges a higher rate.

How much?

Believe it or not the so-called Wholesale Electricity Spot Market charges the CENECO more than double the KEPCO P6 per KWH. The whole sale company (WESM) charges CENECO P16/per KWH.

At first I could not believe the figures.

It must be a misprint I thought. But if CENECO buys electricity at P16 per KWH, how much will the public pay? Maybe CENECO will just absorb the increase. Or maybe, KEPCO will.

Will somebody please enlighten us?

This shift to WESM (Whole Sale Electricity Spot Market) comes after the P31,161,223.08 imposed by CENECO consumers as “billing differential” . (My clerk has typed “biting differential” which is probably more descriptive).

What is a billing differential? What kind of animal is this that lurks in the shadows and suddenly increases the amount you have to pay for electricity you have consumed.

But most, if not all of us, consumers, have to gulp our incomprehension. We are too busy with what we do with our lives to scrutinize the arithmetic of CENCEO, Kepco SPC, or WESM.

So what’s the point here?

It is that the supply of electricity is not stable; that your bills can careen like a vehicle driven by a driver who has too much to drink.

TRADE WAR? Like it or not there appears to be a trade war waged by China against us. First the banana ban which cost the producers about 2 billion in losses. The ban on Chinese tourist to the Philippines, with Boracay authorities saying that about 200,000 potential Chinese tourists disappear like exorcised ghosts. Bad luck for the masseuses.

AGAIN, ABALAJON. Received some materials on sugar from my long time friend, Joaquin Abalajon, whose main message is that the sugar industry has failed to improve the lot of the average worker. Jake says that large sugar farms chopped up into small lots resulted in a fall in productivity. Mechanization of sugar farms is a must --- but in small lots? The government has plans to organize these small plots into bigger organizations that can decrease cost of production. A good concept. But to implement?

The sugar group headed by Mario Villanueva Jr. and Jose Gomez III has written to Ms. Regina Bautista Martin to seek help in implementing SRA Ex. Order No. 18, specifically section 2-B which seeks to insure stabilized price (of sugar) at a level reasonably profitable to producers and consumers.

A great and desirable concept. Implementation is awaited.*

back to top