Why Your Electric Bill Is So High

Filipinos pay a lot for electricity. Most of us feel it every month. But why?

The answer is mostly one word. Coal.

Where the Data Came From

I used two places.

The first is Ember. They are a group that tracks how every country makes its power. Their file is free, and it covers 224 countries and areas from the year 2000.

The second is Meralco itself. Every month they post a short notice saying what one kilowatt-hour will cost. A kilowatt-hour, or kWh, is just a unit of electricity. Running a small aircon for about an hour uses roughly one.

We Burn a Lot of Coal

In 2005, coal made about 27 out of every 100 units of our power.

By 2024 it made almost 64. In 2025 it was 58.7.

So over twenty years, coal more than doubled its share. Every time the country needed more power, we mostly built more coal.

Nobody Nearby Does This

Here is the part that surprised me. I checked our neighbours.

Thailand gets only about 18 out of 100 units from coal. They use gas instead. Singapore is at less than 1. Vietnam and Malaysia burn more than Thailand, but still less than us.

We are the highest of the group.

Why That Makes Your Bill Jumpy

We do not dig up much coal here. We buy most of it from other countries.

That means two things you cannot control set part of your bill.

One is the world price of coal. If it goes up far away, it goes up here.

Two is the peso. Coal is bought in dollars. When the peso gets weaker, the same coal costs more pesos. Meralco said exactly this in one of its notices: a weak peso pushed the price up.

What the Bill Actually Did

In March 2025 Meralco charged 12.29 pesos for one kWh.

In August 2026 it charged 14.78 pesos.

That is about one peso more for every five you used to pay. In those eighteen months the price went down only twice.

What About Solar?

Solar is growing fast. But it is still small.

In 2025 solar made 2.4 out of every 100 units of our power. That is real growth from almost nothing. It is not yet big enough to change the shape of the whole system.

The same is true for wind and the other clean sources. As a share of the total, they have been mostly flat for ten years while coal grew.

What I Am Not Saying

I want to be careful here.

Coal explains why our bill moves with world prices and with the peso. It does not explain the whole bill on its own.

Your bill also pays for wires, for the poles, for taxes, and for keeping the system running. Those are real costs and this data does not split them out.

I also did not compare our final bill to other countries' final bills. That needs price data I do not have. What I compared is how each country makes its power, which is well recorded.

Two Things That Nearly Tricked Me

First, Ember does not call us "Philippines". They call us "The Philippines". If you search for the short name you get zero rows and an empty chart. Not an error. Just nothing. I now have a test that checks the name is still there.

Second, and worse. Each Meralco notice lists several prices per kWh. One is the total you pay. Another is the generation charge, which is only the cost of making the power, and it is about half the total.

They are written in almost the same words. My first program grabbed the wrong one.

I only caught it because each notice tells you two months at once: this month and last month. So notices overlap. When two of them disagreed about the same month, my checker complained. That is how I found it — not by reading the numbers, which looked fine.

What I'd Do Differently

I want a longer price history. Meralco takes old notices down, so I could only reach back to March 2025.

I would also like the other power companies. Meralco serves about a quarter of customers. The rest of the country pays different rates, and some island grids pay far more.