September 7, 2016
THE Energy Regulatory
Commission (ERC) is set to wrap up its probe into the alleged
anticompetitive practices of generation companies (gencos) whose power plants
in Luzon went offline last month.
“We are already close
to completing our inquiry on this,” ERC Chairman Jose Vicente Salazar said in a
text message.
The probe of the gencos
was prompted by the recent forced outages that resulted in rotational brownouts
in Metro Manila and nearby provinces between July 26 and August 5.
There were a total of
20 plants that failed to deliver optimum power on those days, because these
were either on scheduled maintenance shutdown or forced outage. Of the 20
plants, 12 were placed on maintenance shutdown, while eight went on forced
outage.
These
20 plants were unable to deliver more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity. This
prompted the ERC to require power-generation firms to submit a report on the
causes behind these outages. The firms are also being investigated by the
commission if they were engaged in anticompetitive behavior.
“In our analysis, we
have considered parameters, such as the reasons for the outages, the resulting
spot-market rates, and bidding behavior of the generation companies. A
determination will also be made on whether there are compelling reasons for the
commission to conduct further investigation,” Salazar said in an interview.
He also clarified that
the present inquiry is focused only on whether anticompetitive behavior
was committed.
But the commission
vowed to take action so as to prevent similar incidents in the future. Salazar
said the commission will also closely monitor changes in the schedule of power
plant-maintenance shutdown.
“On the issue of
reliability, steps will be taken by the ERC, which will hopefully reduce the
occurrence of red/yellow alerts through the enhancement of our monitoring
mechanism for outage events, as well as the establishment of means to
sanction unwarranted or unreasonable deviations from the schedule of planned
outages by gencos periodically submitted to the system operator. This will most
likely be done through a resolution by the commission en banc,” he said.
Meantime, the ERC will
collaborate with the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) on the
investigation.
“The ERC will work hand
in hand with the Philippine Competition Commission to determine whether there
was, indeed, market power abuse or anticompetitive or discriminatory acts
committed by some gencos during the recent forced outages.
“ERC and PCC will
formalize our partnership soon, so we could define our specific roles to
competently execute and fulfill our respective mandates,” Salazar said.
The Electric Power
Industry Reform Act (Epira) of 2001 mandates the ERC to monitor and penalize
motu proprio any act that constitutes market power abuse and/or anticompetitive
or discriminatory behavior by any electric power-industry participant.
The Philippine
Competition Act (PCA) of 2015, or Republic Act 10667, on the other hand,
mandates the PCC to implement and enforce the said national competition policy
in order to ensure the promotion and protection of the competitive market by
prohibiting anticompetitive agreements, abuse of dominant position, and
anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions.
“Having the PCC as an
ally of the ERC will facilitate the investigation and adjudication of alleged
collusion among gencos.
We will champion and
work for the benefit of Filipino consumers, whose best interests we are
mandated to promote and safeguard,” the ERC chair said.
No comments:
Post a Comment