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DUE TO DROPPING FUEL PRICES
CUC decreases FAC after four months
After four months, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. adjusted once again its Fuel Adjustment Charge decreasing it to $0.12076 per kilowatt hour.
The said charge will be effective Jan. 1 from the previous $0.14445 per kWh will decrease to $.12076 per kWh.
This is due to the drop in the average fuel prices.
“As a result, residential customers who use 445 kWh of power per month will pay approximately $10 less in their monthly billing,” CUC said.
The FAC began going down last August from about $0.16 cents following an increase last May and June with $0.171 and $0.193 respectively.
According to CUC, CNMI consumers have experienced an almost 50-percent decline in the FAC since mid-2014 when on October of that year, FAC, then called Levelized Energy Adjustment Clause or LEAC, was at around $0.30.
The Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission granted CUC the ability to adjust the FAC rate based on the price of oil. Adjustments are made when the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS) monthly pricing equals or exceeds 4.5-percent of the average per gallon cost of fuel used in the calculation of the FAC rate.
FAC is used to purchase fuel and serves as one of the two components that make up a CUC power bill.
CUC first instituted LEAC in 2009 to recover fuel and fuel related costs, a system also used by power providers in Guam and the Virgin Islands.
