Danessa Rivera (The Philippine Star)
- January 11, 2020 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The Department
of Energy (DOE) expects a delay in the start of full operations of the
Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) in Mindanao due to pending rules in
pricing.
DOE assistant secretary Redentor
Delola said the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has yet to approve the price
determination methodology (PDM) for pricing and settlement of electricity
transactions in the Mindanao grid.
‘We won’t be able to go live. We
don’t have the approval of the PDM yet,” he said.
WESM Mindanao was supposed to start
operating on Jan. 26, alongside the operations of New Market Management System
(NMMS) in Luzon and Visayas.
On the new commercial date of WESM
Mindanao, Delola said the DOE would issue a statement on the deferral of the
commercial operations of NMMS for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
The DOE earlier asked the ERC to
relax its requirements to join Mindanao’s WESM to be able to meet commercial
operations target.
This as the power regulator ordered
all power distributors and industry participants in Mindanao to comply with all
the requirements to ensure the overall readiness of the systems and procedures
towards the shift to a new system and environment.
ERC chairperson and chief executive
officer Agnes Devanadera said registration of the WESM had already been delayed
based on results of the recent 19th WESM Mindanao Readiness Assessment (WMRA)
meetings conducted by the DOE.
The WMRA further noted the low
turnout of participation in the trial operations program and the incidence of
manual load dropping despite oversupply of generating capacity in the region
resulting from the DUs’ non-compliance to the IMDP.
ERC sad the completion of the WESM
registry for Mindanao trading participants and their active participation –
particularly of DUs – are essential to the commercial operations of WESM in
Mindanao, which has already been pushed back a couple of times.
The WESM in the Mindanao grid was
launched on June 26, 2017 pursuant to DOE circular 2017-05-009 which aimed to
provide sufficient time for the market operator, system operator and WESM
participants to prepare and familiarize themselves with WESM operations.
Established under the Electric Power
Industry Reform Act of 2001, WESM serves as the country’s electricity trading
market.
Mindanao was not part of the WESM
and its power grid is not connected to the national grid.
Instead, an Interim Mindanao
Electricity Market was set up on Sept. 26, 2013 and started full commercial
operations on Nov. 26, 2013 as a trading floor for electricity in the region.
However, this was suspended in
February 2014 following a grid-wide power interruption in the region,
preventing power companies with excess generating capacity to offer their
output to distribution utilities.
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