INEC: Power rate rising due to generation charges

By Dominic B. dela Cruz

Staff reporter

Dingras, Ilocos Norte—Ilocos Norte Electric Cooperative (INEC) Board of Director (BOD) president Reynaldo Lazo said power charges will continue to rise due to generation charges and the effect of the law of supply and demand.

INEC records show an increase of about .0813 centavos increase per kilowatt hour for residential consumers for April. The specific rates are P9.3925 for March and P9.4738 for April.

A 0.060 centavo increase was also implemented from February to March.

Small and large commercial and industrial consumers, irrigation, public building and street lights rates also went up for the month of April.  

The industrial and large commercial had the highest increases so far for the month of April with 0.0993 centavo.

Mr. Lazo hopes that the increase will not continue next month provided that the power generation companies will not experience problems on electricity to be generated knowing that several dams are now on their water critical level conditions.

Relative to this, Mr. Lazo appealed to all Ilocos Norte consumers to save electricity by turning off appliances that are not being used.

He said that the consumers must also consider that the rate increase is not only the reason why they have high power bills but also the way they use electricity this summer season.

Redistricting eyed

Meanwhile, Mr. Lazo said that they are presently studying the possible redistricting of INEC due to the unequal number of member-consumers per district and as recommended by the National Electrification Administration (NEA).

Of the 11 INEC districts, records show that they have unequal number of member-consumers wherein the board of director who has the most number is having a hard time coping with the delivery of services.

Mr. Lazo cited his district as an example; the Laoag North of the River district has the most number of member-consumers as it spans 55 barangays compared to the other districts.

Ideally, the INEC board president said that every district must have at least 12,000-14,000 member-consumers; his district has more than 20,000 consumers or almost double the ideal number.

This condition gives the possibility of dividing the North of the River district into two and then adding the South of the River district to give Laoag two districts.

The South of the River portion of Laoag is presently combined with the town of San Nicolas, and if this pushes through, the San Nicolas portion of the district could be combined with the nearest town either Paoay or Sarrat or even as part of Batac City.

However, Mr. Lazo stressed that this is just a proposal for now.

Records also show that the Paoay-Currimao district has the least number of member-consumers.

INEC will also study the possibility of dividing the towns of Pagudpud, Bangui, Burgos, Adams and Dumalneg which are all lumped into one district due to the increasing number of consumers.

Based on NEA rules, Mr. Lazo said INEC could have 15 districts as maximum or another option would be for the province to have two electric cooperatives for the first and second districts.

All these proposals, Mr. Lazo said will still need thorough study by the board, management with the participation of member-consumers.