Danessa Rivera (The Philippine Star)
- May 6, 2019 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The Energy
Regulatory Commission (ERC) will issue streamlined rules on competitive
selection process (CSP), including a format for power supply agreements (PSA)
for all power players to follow to secure supply in the grid and to protect
consumers from sudden spikes in power rates.
The move is in line with the recent
yellow and red alert warnings raised in the Luzon grid that led to rotational
brownouts in the past month.
The commission has finished the
streamlined CSP rules and will hold en banc meetings to approve the new rules,
ERC commissioner Catherine Maceda said.
“We’re looking at July (to issue the
new CSP rules). We would probably need one or two en banc meetings to approve
that,” she said.
The ERC and the Department of Energy
(DOE) have been working to harmonize their respective CSP rules.
Alongside the issuance of the CSP
rules is the release of the PSA format for all power players.
Maceda said the new PSA format would
include a provision on the procurement of replacement power, especially in
times when the generating power plant undergoes forced maintenance shutdown.
“Hopefully, (we will come out with
the PSA format) in 30 days,” she said. “We already have a draft and it is
already in the penultimate stage.”
However, the new PSA format will
only cover prospective contracts between power distributors and generating
companies (gencos).
For the previous PSAs with
provisional authority (PA), Maceda said the ERC will act on the applications
and issue a final decision accordingly.
“The pending PSAs are contracts
between parties already agreed upon. We issued PA…but we still have a final
decision on the applications,” the ERC commissioner said.
The DOE is also conducting a review
on replacement power and outage allowance under existing PSAs, as ordered by
Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi.
This is to ensure that power
distributors and gencos are implementing the provisions and the higher cost of
power will not be passed on to consumers in times of forced outage of plants
that lead to tight supply conditions in the grid.
In March, the Luzon grid was placed
on yellow alert for three days and this has already pushed up consumers’
electricity bills by 6.33 centavos per kilowatt-hour (kwh) in the Meralco
franchise area.
Last month, yellow and red alerts
were raised in the Luzon grid almost daily, with several days of rotational
brownouts occurring across the island region, particularly in Metro Manila.
The tight supply conditions were due
to unforced shutdown of several power plants.
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