The government will introduce the wholesale electricity spot market in the Visayas on Dec. 26 that will make excess power in Luzon available to the island group and vice versa, an official said Monday.
Philippine Electricity Market Corp. president Melinda Ocampo said WESM Visayas would have a “soft launching” today and that additional power supplies were expected to be registered with the spot market.
WESM serves a centralized venue for buyers and sellers to trade electricity as a commodity where prices are based on actual demand and supply. WESM is operational only in Luzon.
“We don’t know yet the additional available capacity for WESM Visayas because it is still in the process of registration. Commercial operations will be on Dec. 26 and this time it will be one market... integrated,” Ocampo said.
Ocampo said power suppliers in the Visayas with no contracts would be accounted now in the WESM trading floor.
She said PEMC had not encountered any problems in launching the spot market.
Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras said last week that those opposing WESM in the Visayas had finally realized its benefits.
“Those who have opposed it have finally understood why we need to do it. I told the, if you allow WESM to operate today, your brownouts will end today,” he said.
Almendras predicted a slight increase in the power rates in Visayas, which includes major cities such as Cebu and Iloilo, once the WESM started commercial operations.
“There may be some spikes until the entry of new power plants,” he said, assuring the public that the higher rates would just be temporary.
The Energy Department has been hoping to operate Visayas WESM around two years ago. The agency did not push through with the plan after consultants raised concern over the tight power supply situation in the Visayas grid.
The department tapped the services of Intelligent Energy Systems, a consultancy company based in Australia, to assess the expansion of WESM to the Visayas.
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