According to Yahoo!Singapore News:

SINGAPORE : Households and businesses in Singapore will have to pay more for electricity from next year.

SP Services said tariffs will be going up from the first quarter of 2008.

A statement released on Wednesday showed that the new rates will hit a six—year high for households and small businesses.

SP Services attributed the higher cost of electricity to higher fuel prices.

On average, the tariffs will go up by 5.94 percent. This translates into an increase of about S$1.30 in the monthly bill of households staying in one—room flats.

Residents of 5—room flat units are likely to pay about S$5.50 more each month.

The rates are reviewed and adjusted according to fluctuating electricity costs every quarter, and they have been approved by industry regulator, the Energy Market Authority

According to The Straits Times:

Fuel prices drive up electricity tariffs

FROM next month, electricity tariffs will go up nearly 6 per cent, to 22.62 cents per kilowatt-hour (kwh).

This is the highest price hike since 2001. The revision is the result of soaring fuel prices, said Singapore Power which released the January to March tariff on Wednesday.

The 1.24 cents per kwh increase works out to between $1.30 and $5.50 a month for one- to five-room HDB flats.

Between Jan 1 and March 31 next year, Singapore Power expects fuel prices to go up by some 10.5 per cent, from $87.46 per barrel to $96.64 (US$66.28) a barrel.

Electricity prices are adjusted every three months. The last increase was made for the October-to-December quarter where electricity costs went up between $1 to $4.20 a month for one- to five-room HDB flats.

Members of Parliament The Straits Times spoke to agreed that with the rising fuel oil prices, the electricity tariff hike is inevitable.

Dr Lily Neo, an MP for Jalan Besar GRC, said lower-income families and the elderly ‘will definitely feel the pinch’.

She noted: ‘Already, many don’t switch on the lights at night to save the extra few cents. What we can do is offer financial help such as NTUC vouchers and food and grocery vouchers to tide them over.’

Read the full story in Thursday’s edition of The Straits Times.

At www.spservices.com.sg, you can read all their latest news release at the news room.

Download the PDF News Release for 26 December 2007.

For 22.62 cents per kilowatt-hour new tariff means for every kilowatt-hour electricity used you pay 22.62 cents.

The National Average consumption of electricity is 393kWh which means average bills paying right now for most Singaporeans is 393 x 22.62 cents = $88.90 excluding water, sanitation and GST. Total national average plus everything should around $100 to $150 plus minus depending on how much you use.

Currently the electricity tariff is “regulated” and only changes quarterly (every 3 months) on a back ward revision on the tariff to adjust accordingly base on cost of fuel and demand. If previous 3 months is under-charged then the tariff will hike up and goes down if over-charged.

After 2009, the “Pay-As-You-Use” system will be implemented in a open and deregulated tariff system. They call these new users “Contestable” Users and the tariff will be traded by EMC (Energy Market Company) that will trade electricity base on demand and supply, cost of fuel and other speculative factors.

The benefits of more competition in the open market supposedly should have cheaper electricity tariff ($/kWh) and better services when consumer buy contracts from various licensed electricity retailers like Seraya, Senoko, Keppel , Sembcorp, Tuas and possibly other competitors like Island Power.

The problems is that even with competitive pricing plans much like M1, Starhub and Singtel…you cannot control the cost of fuel to generate electricity which currently uses 80% natural gas and the rest is expensive oil base products like bitumen (Tar Sands) and etc.

Any demand disruption like a black out or oil disruption in the middle east will cause electricity tariff to spike within 30 minutes (the intervals for electricity trading). This will cause unsuspecting users much pain in their pockets if they do not know about the disruption and continued to use the electricity at a much higher cost.

All these might change depending on the pricing plans you might purchase after 2009, there might not be even a “full deregulation” of the electricity market if the initial test of the system fails to provide cheaper prices for household consumers for the beta testers.

Enron Energy marketing company collapsed previously because of rampant trading of electrical tariff and had caused Californians much hardship. The frequent high spikes of electricity tariff caused by disruption of power supply due to frequent forest fire and maintenance of power plants. There are many insider cover ups of losses and other unspecific fraudulent accounting practices that caused the collapsed of Enron but we must not be complacent when following blindly into similar US Style deregulation of electricity market.

Deregulation means no more control from government and it will induce speculating trading and also unseen market forces to “steal and plunder” the money of the people through trading of electricity.

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