Business Mirror
Published on Wednesday, 25 September 2013 20:35 Written by Manuel T.Cayon
DAVAO CITY—The Department of Energy (DOE) hopes to extract as much as 150 megawatts (MW) from built-in and standby power of the private sector after it formally launched the operation of an electricity market in Mindanao, a move that puts equivalent monetary amount for the use of these embedded power from corporations.
The Interim Mindanao Electricity Market (IMEM) would start operating on Thursday and would be the temporary market for electricity supply that electric cooperatives and distribution utilities in the area can access for their load volume.
The main source would still be the hydroelectric power churned out by several government-run power plants along the Agus River in Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte, and from the single plant in Pulangui River in Maramag, Bukidnon.
“All of the distribution utilities and other generation capacities connected to the Mindanao power system are mandated to participate in the IMEM. However, the market is also encouraging the participation of the voluntary load customers through load curtailment or synchronized self-generation,” Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said.
Petilla was here last week to launch the IMEM.
He said the commercial electricity market “would allow energy distributors to sell power supply from its embedded generators to areas having deficit,” he said.
“IMEM is designed to provide an immediate venue for transparent and efficient utilization of additional capacities to address Mindanao’s energy supply shortfall,” he said.
The electricity market is expected to draw between 100 mw to 150 mw of power, “with supply-deficient electric cooperatives likely to buy capacity requirements,” he added.
Before the IMEM, industry officials appealed to corporations to use their embedded power generators and big-capacity generator sets during peak hours so that the freed megawatts would be used to offset the long hours of brownouts in other areas.
This year’s load curtailment scheme hit the hardest the Zamboanga Peninsula and the Cotabato provinces, whose electric distributors have no additional power sources other than the supply from the National Power Corp.
As reports came in about corporations having their own power generation sets that were not being connected to the grid during their long standby periods, the energy sector suggested to apply the electricity market to encourage corporations to connect their generator sets to the grid for a fee.
“The IMEM is not here as a final institution with final rules. It will react according to the needs of the electricity market rather than put out final procedures that cannot be changed,” Petilla said.
He said the IMEM “is by far the most dynamic way of extracting uncontracted and available power capacities in Mindanao.”
“We will extract every possible source we can find, with the dispatch protocol made fully transparent to all players,” Petilla said.
He promised that “no electricity market will operate without a transparency mechanism.”
“We are assured of sufficient supply two years from now but in the meantime, we welcome the upcoming operations of Mindanao’s own electricity market to ease up deficiency,” Secretary Luwalhati Antonino, chairperson of the Mindanao Development Authority, said.
She said though that load curtailments would still be expected in parts of Mindanao in the coming months “mainly due to scheduled preventive maintenance of the some power plants”. But she said “the entry of capacities in the IMEM would result to better power outlook”.
Petilla said the IMEM would be a “pilot test for Mindanao’s eventual transition to Wholesale Electricity Spot Market in Mindanao, once generation adequacy is established for the island-region.”
“I am not really too much worried about Mindanao in the long-term because by 2015, especially in 2016, there will be enough power to the extent that there will be oversupply in the region,” Petilla said. source
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