The Raving Lunatic

It seems everyone is out to take on Meralco. Tang-ina nyong lahat kayong nagmamarunong! Ang tanga tanga nyo! I never thought I’d be doing this, but I’d give in to at least one.

From this article: Adopt ‘flat rate’ Napocor urged

To avoid further confusion, the National Power Corp. (Napocor) should adopt a “flat rate” policy for the generation charge it sells to power distributors like the Lopez-run Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) to lessen consumers’ monthly power bills, a senior lawmaker suggested.

This is the terrible situation in the country. Populist lawmakers would sound incredibly stupid to those who understand the real facts and yet they’d go on doing so because they’d win the support of the common masa.

Rep. Luis Villafuerte said the state-owned power generation facility should “abandon the time of use pricing scheme, the peak and off-peak hours rates” that only tend to create perplexity, as Meralco has been accusing Napocor of imposing exorbitant rates.

It is complex and it’s not meant to be tackled with the brains of five year olds.

“If Napocor implements the flat rate system, it is expected that the generation charge of Napocor will be lower than the Meralco independent power producer,” the Camarines Sur congressman said.

Come to think of it, this asshole insinuates this was actually done maliciously.

Meralco, the country’s biggest power distributor, buys 50 percent of its electricity needs from Napocor and gets the other half from its own IPP, like the Lopez-owned First Gas Power Corp. It has been said that electricity bought during off-peak hours is cheaper.

This is a lost case. The concept is simple, yet excruciatingly hard for anyone to absorb. I’ll explain later.

Villafuerte also called on the Energy Regulatory Commission to “review and evaluate the pricing of Meralco IPPs, such that Napocor and First Gas will reduce their respective charges from the present levels, to the ultimate benefit of consumers.”

This congressman is telling the ERC to do its job and yet forgets he should be doing his instead of acting like a wimp. For all of you imbeciles, for Napocor to charge a single flat rate means it should be dictating all of your demand for electricity. It basically means you should be all balancing your consumption all throughout your 24-hour day. If your electric fan is powered for the first hour, you have to turn it off on the second if you want to power on your refrigerator, and so on. Because there isn’t enough power to run everything in the day, malls will have to operate on a schedule. SM North Edsa shall open at 9PM, when SM Megamall closes. SM Megamall should turn off every power sucking appliance to shift the load to SM North Edsa. Offices will also run on a schedule. The Department of Foreign Affairs can close at 5PM and another office, arbitrarily the Social Security System can take its place from dusk till dawn.

Electricity is cheaper at night, because the demand is low and generators requiring less to operate are ran. That’s too hard for the common Filipino to understand.

Another sure way to significantly reduce the high cost of electricity is to break the monopoly of Meralco in providing power in Metro Manila and its suburbs, even as the Lopez-run firm has yet to comply with the P30-billion refund order of the Supreme Court, he said.

Break the monopoly? The company would love to have competition to be finally allowed to raise its distribution rates.

Villafuerte mentioned this in House Resolution 592 that he initiated, which seeks to adopt measures that would ensure “consumer protection,” through a “fair and reasonable price” of electricity to consumers.

Yes, this is what the company has been voicing out all along – cheaper generation rates!

Among the four amendments to the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Republic Act 9136) he proposed were the “demonopolization of ownership and dispersal of shares of public utilities” such as Meralco. At the same time, Villafuerte called on the Lopezes to pay back Meralco’s four million customers the P30 billion it overcharged from 1994 to 2003, which has been ordered by no less than the Supreme Court.

This congressman, appears to be also living under a rock. Where was he when all the events in the country are taking place?

“It is not fair that all consumers will not be refunded fully for the income taxes that the SC ordered to be refunded. Billions of pesos remain to be refunded by Meralco,” he said.

See above.

Another refund that Villafuerte wanted to be enforced involves the “meter deposits” of Meralco’s end consumers, “plus an imputed 10 percent per annum from dates deposits were made.”

Hey, the company’s been clamoring for this years ago. Again, this would be hard for the common congressman to fathom.

Villafuerte accused the power distributor of “cheating” after it admitted in a Senate hearing last week that it “passed on” to consumers the P531-million electric consumption it incurred in 2007.

I accuse Villafuerte of “epitomizing the ultimate papansin at tangang congressman.”

“Consumers are not obligated to pay electricity that they never received or enjoyed using. Electricity, which Meralco appropriates for its own use, is not pilferage. That constitutes cheating by Meralco in layman’s term, if passed on to consumers,” he said.

I am amazed that this congressman missed out the clauses in the specific law he invoked which would at least give light to his problems with regard to Meralco.

Ba’t ba nakikisawsaw to in the first place? E ni hindi naman sha nakatira sa franchise ng Meralco ah?