Meralco bills customers for electrons that were theoretically available during brownout, asks for understanding
Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Utility Introduces Potential Energy Tariff for Non-Delivered Power
MANILA — Manila Electric Company released billing statements this week that included a new line item described in the bill as Potential Energy Availability Charge, covering electricity that the company was theoretically capable of generating and transmitting during the brownout periods that interrupted power across Metro Manila for eleven cumulative hours over the past month. Meralco says the charge reflects the infrastructure it maintained in a state of readiness to deliver power it ultimately did not deliver, and that customers benefit from this readiness even when, as during a brownout, they are sitting in the dark unable to find the bill.
Corporate communications director Liza Voltaje said the charge represents a genuine service. ‘When you book a hotel room and do not use it, you still pay,’ she said. ‘The room was available. The reservation was honoured. We view brownout electricity similarly. The electrons were prepared. They were queued. The grid had other ideas. That should not be our loss alone.’
Customers Request Conceptual Payment in Return
Residential and commercial customers responded by submitting what one consumer advocate described as ‘the most creative accounts payable documentation in Philippine billing history.’ One Makati restaurant owner sent Meralco a cheque for the Potential Energy charge alongside an invoice for the food spoilage during the brownout, a demand for compensation for the dining reservations she cancelled, and a philosophical treatise on the nature of availability arguing that her refrigerator was also available to cool food during the outage and that Meralco should similarly pay for the potential of all appliances it rendered non-operational. She has not received a response but reports the cheque has been cashed.
The Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees Meralco’s billing practices, confirmed receipt of consumer complaints and said it will review the Potential Energy Availability Charge for compliance with the Electricity Market Rules. The review is expected to conclude in twelve to eighteen months, during which time the charge will continue to appear on bills. Meralco noted this timeline is standard and expressed confidence in the outcome.
ERC Historical Context
The ERC has issued fourteen formal orders to Meralco since 2015 regarding billing transparency, rate calculation methodology, and charge classifications, of which Meralco has complied with eleven, challenged two in court, and described one as a misunderstanding of what an electric company fundamentally does. The pending court cases involve charges that the ERC calculated were incorrectly passed to consumers, and that Meralco calculated were correctly passed to consumers, and that consumers calculated were simply too high, and that no one has calculated in a way that has resulted in a refund cheque.
The Department of Energy meanwhile released its third energy security framework of the current administration, calling for increased investment in baseload generation capacity, renewable integration, and grid resilience, which are the same three priorities identified in the previous two frameworks. The International Energy Agency‘s Southeast Asia outlook noted that the Philippines faces structural supply constraints requiring sustained capital investment, a conclusion that costs considerably less to produce than the infrastructure it recommends and that has been equally available for several years without being connected to anything.
Meralco Unveils SmartGrid 2030 Programme
As if anticipating the controversy, Meralco simultaneously unveiled its SmartGrid 2030 Programme, a P150 billion initiative to modernise the distribution network with automated fault detection, real-time load balancing, and self-healing grid architecture that the company says will reduce brownout frequency by up to sixty percent by the end of the decade. Analysts noted the programme was announced during a brownout, which the company’s communications team said was ‘a powerful demonstration of the need for exactly this investment,’ and which the consumer federation said was ‘a powerful demonstration of something else entirely.’
The programme will be funded through rate adjustments, system loss charges, and a Modernisation Readiness Surcharge that will appear on bills starting next quarter, listed immediately below the Potential Energy Availability Charge on bills that customers are encouraged to pay by electronic transfer to avoid the service fee for paying by cheque, which remains available as an option for the fee, which is also on the bill, under Cheque Availability Charge.
Module Four: The Advanced Seminar
Programme designers have added a fourth module not in the original curriculum, titled ‘What To Do When You Can Identify the Category But Cannot Act on the Information.’ The module addresses a gap identified in focus groups: participants who correctly identified fake news, satire, or misleading government communications found themselves without practical next steps in an information environment where accurate categorisation does not produce accountability, de-platforming is contested, and the institutions empowered to respond have themselves been placed in earlier modules as examples requiring evaluation. The module’s lead educator told reporters this is the most important part of the curriculum. It is also, she added, the part with the least funding, the most controversy, and the smallest allocation in the P2 billion budget, which she confirmed she can categorise precisely but cannot do anything about, which is, she said, perhaps the most advanced lesson of all.
More absurdity at https://www.private-eye.co.uk.
SOURCE: Satirical Journalism