The Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) wants the government to pursue the operations of the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM) in Mindanao even before the completion of the Mindanao-Visayas interconnection project (MVIP).
IEMOP said this will help resolve all possible problems even before the actual delivery of energy to and from Mindanao.
“We’re looking at really establishing the final preparations to establish WESM in Mindanao.
Hopefully, that happens on or before June, but we’ll get more of a feel of the final declaration of the DOE (Department of Energy) this May, if that pushes through. As far as IEMOP is concerned… we would want WESM to operate in Mindanao before the energization of MVIP,” Edward Olmedo, IEMOP senior manager for operations, planning and modelling, said in an online briefing last week.
“Unlike if there is already a WESM, all transactions involving exchange of power will be handled by the WESM… We’ll wait for the decision of DOE in May, but it is really recommended we have enough time before the energization (of MVIP) so that we will not have a problem how to manage the final transactions involving the exchange of power,” Olmedo said.
Katrina Garcia-Amuyot, IEMOP manager for registration and stakeholder services, said out of 96 required participants in WESM Mindanao, 56 have fully registered with the rest still completing their requirements.
Meanwhile, IEMOP reported that average price of electricity in WESM for April dropped by over 10 percent to P6.26 per kilowatt hour (kWh) from P6.97 per kWh due to higher available supply against lower demand.
For the period of April 1 to 25, average power supply available in WESM hit 13,995 megawatts (MW), over 3 percent higher from March’s 13,546 MW.
Average demand for the period fell by over 1 percent to 10,454 MW from 10,600 MW.
IEMOP said the lower demand last month was driven by the effects of weather disturbances Agaton and Basyang to the temperature as well as the Holy Week break.
