Published June 27, 2020, 10:00 PM By Myrna M.
Velasco
The Department of Energy (DOE) has
created a technical working group (TWG) that shall guide it in the formulation
of auction terms under the competitive selection process (CSP) for the
procurement of ancillary services (AS) or reserves for the country’s power
system.
Ancillary services or reserves are
critical component of electricity system operations because insufficiency or
the lack of it could shove consumers into suffering rate spikes when reserves
would run tight; or brownouts when reserves would tumble into zero or negative
level.
The AS-TWG, as stipulated in the new
Circular issued by the department, shall be co-chaired by designated officials
from the DOE and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC); while memberships are
from the National Electrification Administration (NEA), National Transmission
Corporation, Philippine Electricity Market Corporation, Independent Electricity
Market Operator of the Philippines, National Grid Corporation of the
Philippines, Manila Electric Company, Philippine Electric Plant Owners
Association, Philippine Independent Power Producers Association Inc., and other
officials of the DOE and ERC.
On DOE’s part, it named Energy
Assistant Secretary Redentor Delola as co-chair and Director Mario Marasigan as
his alternate; while for ERC, the designated co-chair is Nestor Padilla and his
alternate is Eloisa Gipa.
Beyond the CSP framework on power
reserves’ procurement, the TWG shall also develop technical specifications and
testing for the accreditation process of the AS providers; and must render
technical assistance and advice to the DOE in developing further AS policies.
Further, the body has to “review the
existing methodology for determining the appropriate AS categories and the
required level for each AS category and recommend revisions to applicable rules
to the ERC as necessary.”
The classifications of power reserves
required by the power grids include: contingency and regulating reserves which
are classified as primary and secondary reserves; dispatchable which is
tertiary reserve; then reactive power support and blackstart as other types of
reserves.
A contingency reserve is the power
plant that will be ready to plug any capacity loss in the system – and often,
this is equivalent to the biggest unit in a power grid; like the Sual power
plant for Luzon.
A dispatchable reserve, on the other
hand, is a plant that is not scheduled for regular energy supply or for the
other type of AS requirements, and can immediately be dispatched to replenish
the contingency reserve.
Reactive power support service
accounts for the type of ancillary service to ensure technical reliability of a
power system; while blackstart is needed to let the grid quickly recover from a
partial or total blackout.
Further, the AS-TWG shall develop
guidelines for the long-planned operation of a reserve market via the Wholesale
Electricity Spot Market.
As targeted, once the
WESM-underpinned reserve market is already in place, primary and secondary
reserves shall still be procured via firm contracts; while tertiary reserves
may be done either through contracts or through trade or purchase from the
market.
No comments:
Post a Comment