No, AI did not raise your Meralco bill this month. Here is what did.
The July increase adds about 69 pesos to a 200 kWh bill. The cause is gas, not data centers. But the data center bill is coming, and it is worth knowing the difference.
Meralco raised rates this month by 34.28 centavos per kilowatt hour, taking a typical household from 14.4833 to 14.8261 pesos per kWh. If you use around 200 kWh, that is roughly 69 pesos more on this month's bill.
The reflex, in a year of AI headlines and data center announcements, is to assume the machines did it. They did not. Not this month, and not this increase.
What actually pushed it up
The generation charge, which is what Meralco pays to buy the electricity it delivers to you, rose 18 centavos per kWh to 9.2504 pesos. Two things drove it, and both are about fuel.
The Malampaya gas field went into a scheduled month-long maintenance shutdown starting June 15. With its own gas unavailable, the Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo plants had to run on imported liquefied natural gas, which costs more. That single switch pushed First Gas and Prime CoreGen charges up 36.13 centavos per kWh. Separately, charges from post-Epira power supply agreements rose 26.78 centavos per kWh, which Meralco attributes to the continuing Middle East conflict feeding through to global energy prices.
One thing worked in your favour. The Energy Regulatory Commission extended its suspension of the Green Energy Auction Allowance, worth 3.71 centavos per kWh, until August. Without that, this month would have stung a little more.
Where AI actually comes in
The AI pressure on your bill is real, it is simply not what happened in July. It is a demand story rather than a fuel story, and it is still building. The country had roughly 500 megawatts of installed data center capacity across 28 facilities in early 2026. The DICT wants 1.5 gigawatts online by 2027. For scale, the grid as a whole has been adding around 500 megawatts of capacity a year, so the data center pipeline alone is talking about roughly double the usual annual growth.
It is already physical, not theoretical. Meralco has been building transmission specifically for these customers, including a new 115 kV switching station for ePLDT's VITRO Sta. Rosa facility in Laguna to serve an initial 67 megawatts. That is one building drawing more than a small town.
The difference worth remembering
Fuel spikes reverse. When Malampaya comes back and LNG stops being the substitute, that part of the charge should ease. Demand growth does not reverse. If a later increase is driven by new load rather than fuel prices, it does not fall back when the next maintenance window ends. So the line to watch on future advisories is which one Meralco names. This month it said fuel. The month it starts saying demand is the month the AI build-out reaches your bill.