The Meralco power price hike is another additional burden to the agony of the poor Filipino people. What is unacceptable is why do the power consumer need to pay for the development of renewable energy? Why do the people need to pay for reasearch of renewable energy?
Meralco explained the hike was mainly driven by a P0.10/kWh-increase in generation charge and a higher Feed-in Tariff Allowance (FIT-All), a fee paid to renewable energy developers.
http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2016/04/06/meralco-april-rate-hike.html
Renewable or green energy is not cheap. Some developed countries countries like Australia has provided government subsidies to consumers to install domestic solar panels with their excess energy to be sold back to the national grid. During the early implementation of the poilicy, domestic consumer that availed of the subsidy has been able to significantly reduce their power bills. In some instances they were even aerning a revenue selling power back to the grid. There sell back rate is much higher than the normal generation charge from a regular power generation plant.
Despite the benefits to the consumer who install solar panels at home, the power rate slowly increased. Power companies passed to the general consumers the excessive fees they were paying to the domestic power generators.
In the case of Meralco collecting higher fees from consumer to pay renewable energy developers is ridiculous and totally unacceptable. Renewable energy developer should be getting their research expenses from their own pocket and not from the poor Filipino people.