Danessa Rivera (The Philippine Star)
- September 26, 2019 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — Energy
Secretary Alfonso Cusi wants Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) to change the terms
in its competitive selection process (CSP) for greenfield capacity.
Meralco has already submitted the
new terms of reference (TOR) to the Department of Energy (DOE) for its
approval, its president and chief executive officer Ray Espinosa said.
“They will review it already. We’re
hoping we (get) cleared this week so we can publish (the invitation) this
week,” he said.
Meralco conducted the CSP for the
1,200-MW greenfield capacity earlier this month but was declared a failed
bidding after only Atimonan One Energy Inc., a unit of Meralco Powergen Corp.,
submitted its offer.
Under the terms, Meralco wants the
generation companies to bid for the whole supply requirement using plants with
high efficiency, low emission technology.
However, Cusi does not want Meralco
to contract the full capacity of the genco participating in the bid.
He said any greenfield plant could
opt to contract or sell only a part of its capacity to a distribution utility.
This is to allow the remaining
capacity to be sold to the wholesale electricity spot market for reserves.
“We just don’t like it to be
limiting, so we encourage more participation so we can improve our energy
capacity, rates, energy reliability,” Cusi said.
The energy secretary has been urging
the private sector to invest in merchant plants to further spur competition in
the electricity spot market. Merchant plants are those power plants selling
their output to the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market.
Currently, 90 percent of the
country’s power supply is sourced from bilateral contracts between power
generators and DUs. This means only 10 percent of the supply comes from WESM.
The DOE earlier pitched to increase
the volume of the spot market to 20 percent.
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