Utilities & Mobile Best Posts in Thread: Electricity pricing in the Philippines

Most of the price rises we are seeing for food and commodities is just opportunism. Much of it has no relation to the cost of raw materials, transport, labor etc.

 

Nothing makes much sense here

 

Here's the chart for the price per kwh that Noreco II has been charging retail customers in recent times.
View attachment upload_2023-2-13_21-6-18.png

The price dip in January last year was an incidental dip caused by a sudden compensation of subsidies, so the price for that month wasn't representative.
However, it is quite obvious that current prices are still a lot higher than they were (around 20% above the mid 2021 levels).

Now, one might argue that 20% higher than 18 months ago is not dramatic, especially not when compared to what's happening in Europe with electricity prices.
However, when you take a closer look at electricity production in this country, you quickly discover that natural gas plays only a minor role in electricity production.
The bulk is generated with coal as fuel, and a substantial part is generated from sustainable sources (mostly geothermal, which means that part of the electricity production has a cost close to zero).
Here's the graph for that
View attachment upload_2023-2-13_21-19-59.png

Moreover, when taking into account the recent fall in market prices for coal as well as natural gas (both of which are back at mid 2021 prices, see below graphs)
View attachment upload_2023-2-13_21-22-20.png
View attachment upload_2023-2-13_21-22-55.png

then suddenly the stubbornly high prices for electricity in this country don't make much sense at all.