The Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) achieves another milestone as it marks its second year of service as the Independent Market Operator (IMO) of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM).
Incorporated last 2018, IEMOP commenced with the WESM operations on Sept. 26 of the same year pursuant to the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 (EPIRA). Since then, IEMOP has been providing expert market solutions and services in line with its vision to be a world-class service organization committed to provide excellent and reliable market management.
Alongside this, IEMOP continues to be in constant coordination with its participants and stakeholders by conducting engagement meetings to apprise them on the latest developments within the industry.
During its monthly media briefing, IEMOP gave a detailed situationer on the market supply, demand, and transactions in the WESM as well as updates on the Enhanced WESM Design and Operations that is set to Go-Live this December 2020.
Market Operations
Supply margin continued to be sufficient for the month of August 2020 resulting to an average price of 2.08 P/kWh. As requested by medical groups, the Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) was again implemented in the National Capital Region (NCR), Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal from the period of 4-18 August 2020. This resulted in a 696 MW decrease in Luzon’s peak demand during its first week. The demand level for the following weeks continued to be relatively low given the two consecutive long weekends due to the commemoration of the Ninoy Aquino Day and National Heroes Day.
Beginning Sept. 4, 2020, a decrease in supply level was observed with several generating plants going on scheduled maintenance, a number of notable plants on forced outages, and capacity deration of some power producers. Highest outage of 2,945 MW was recorded on Sept. 7, 2020 on which 1,752 MW are planned outage while 1,193 MW are forced outage.
With the outages that transpired, the average market price of about 3 PhP/KWh saw a spike in prices beginning Sept. 4 2020 reaching as high as 36.11 PhP/KWh average during a single interval. In total, there were 31 trading intervals with market clearing prices higher than 10.00 PhP/KWh for the period of Sept. 4 to 13, 2020. Despite the occurrence of price spikes on the said period, the average price still amounted to only 3.64 PhP/KWh as of Sept. 13, 2020.
The aggregated Luzon and Visayas (system) peak demand of 12,586 MW on 08 September 2020 was the highest demand recorded since July 2020. At the onset of September, the Luzon peak demand was noticeably increasing with peak demand of 10,563 MW on 1400H of Sept. 8, 2020. Meanwhile, the peak demand in Visayas of 2,099 MW occurred on 1400H of Aug. 26, 2020 with similar levels observable in the other weekdays. On a regional level, the Luzon Peak Demand of 10,563 MW exceeded its 2019 peak by 3%.
In comparison to the figures last year, the System Peak Demand generally decreased in the prior months, but it has exceeded its 2019 demand levels during the month of September 2020 by 1.3% or 163 MW higher.
Enhanced WESM Design and Operations
IEMOP’s ongoing “Fast-Forward to Five: Enhanced WESM Design Full Parallel and Trial Operations Program” campaign continues on as it caps off another round of focus group discussions held last Aug. 27 to discuss the issues, updates and next activities in time for the target date.
In the remaining months before the Go-Live, IEMOP continues to work hand-in-hand with the Trading Participants by addressing the various issues and concerns they have encountered during their participation in the POP and TOP.
