As volunteer chairman of my condominium's management council, I have been losing sleep over how the spike in electricity prices has had a major impact on residents of the estate.

Over the last six months, the condominium's electricity bill has spiked by 300 per cent. Running the entire estate with the increasing electricity cost is not sustainable, even with the energy-saving efforts and investments we made early last year.

We are considered a commercial electricity consumer and cannot apply for the regulated tariff rate.

We have been trying to obtain a fixed price plan from a power generation company or electricity retailer since November last year without any success.

We've had no option but to buy electricity from the wholesale market, where prices can fluctuate wildly.

Even at non-peak prices, we'd be paying $70,000 for one month of electricity supply. That's close to the entire monthly cost of running our estate.

Now that the Temporary Electricity Contracting Support Scheme has been extended to May (Electricity scheme for commercial users to be extended, Feb 15), I hope things will be better.

I also wonder how other management councils are coping.

Nicholas Chew Chih Loong