With system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) getting bombarded with complaints over its alleged technically and financially-punitive dispatch calls for capacities, stricter market surveillance is set to be enforced for the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market.
“Investigations and imposition of penalties will only be effective if done immediately, so I want the Market Surveillance Committee (MSC) to come up with monthly reports on violations or offenses committed by market participants,” Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said.
He said the manner of MSC investigations and the impositions of penalties being delayed by almost three years had been counter-productive and failed in thwarting market breaches.
The WESM’s MSC earlier enforced penalties against power generators which allegedly violated dispatch rules, but these are being opposed by the affected industry players – with them invoking the “unacceptable dispatch protocols” that NGCP had been enforcing on cited circumstances.
Market participants said the system operator, in many instances, had resorted to calling individual power plants and compelled them to make their capacities available even if they are not scheduled and without necessarily taking into account the technical constraints on their operations.
It had also been raised that NGCP does not even discriminate as to the dispatch of must-run units (MRUs) vis-à-vis its mandatory need to provide for ancillary services. Worse, according to sources, the SO has been left unpunished for such offenses.
With these concerns now placed under scrutiny, Petilla said NGCP will be “required to make documentation of all its dispatch instructions to power plants and this shall be reflected in the market report of PEMC (Philippine Electricity Market Corporation).” The energy secretary has been pushing for revisions in the WESM rules so parties committing market breaches or dispatch violations can be sanctioned accordingly.
Petilla emphasized “everybody must challenge NGCP on its dispatch instructions if these are not warranted under the prevailing circumstances.” Relevant parties, he said, must document such situations and report it through the market.
The penalty system, he explained, must work in such a way that the party straining system operation or supply availability must correspondingly shoulder the financial indemnity. source
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