As lower temperatures and rainy days occur over the Philippines, demand for electricity dampened. For the first half of October, the system peak demand decreased by 5.4% or 696 MW compared with the 2019 level. This resulted in market prices in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) for the 1st half of October to decline to 2.19 P/kWh
On a regional level, Luzon Peak Demand is at 10,303 MW while Visayas Peak Demand was recorded at 2,008 MW.
Supply generally remained sufficient, although some price spikes were encountered on the first week of October as a result of the planned outage of the Leyte-Luzon HVDC interconnection, which limited the flow of power between the Luzon and Visayas grids.
September 2020
For September, the effective spot settlement price increased to 3.88 P/kWh and is largely attributable to the occurrence of price spikes as generator outages affected the supply levels.
Supply levels started to decrease last 04 September, thereby depleting the margin in Luzon and Visayas with several generating plants that are de-rated, on scheduled maintenance and on forced outage. Largest capacity on outage of 2,945 MW was recorded on 07 September, of which 1,752 MW were planned outages while 1,194 MW were forced outages. The thin supply margin resulted in an increase in market price with the Load Weighted Average Price (LWAP) reaching as high as 36.20 PhP/KWh for a single interval.
The System Peak Demand exceeded its 2019 peak demand for the same month with September 2020 having a level 1.3% or 163 MW higher than the previous year. Delving further, Luzon Peak Demand reached 10,563 MW in September, higher than the 10,260 MW value recorded during the similar period in the previous year.
Overall, the generation mix was dominated by coal plants which provided 58.4% of the energy requirement followed by natural gas plants at 21.1%, while geothermal plants contributed 11.3% and hydro plants provided 5.2% of the total generation. The remaining balance were contributed by the other renewable energy plants (Wind – 0.5%, Biomass – 0.9% and Solar – 1.5%). Wind energy generation increased to 35 GWh for September from 33 GWH in August and 13 GWh in July 2020.
Market Readiness
IEMOP has successfully completed its preparations for the Enhanced WESM Design and Operations (EWDO) on 30 September 2020. With the completion of the critical performance testing and fine-tuning activities, the New Market Management System (NMMS) and the Central Registration and Settlement System (CRSS) are now ready for commercial use. This completes the preparations of IEMOP for the Go-Live, which also included the achievement of the reliability standard for the market systems, software audit certification for the new market systems, deployment of enhancements, continuous availability of the market interfaces, conduct of trainings, and the implementation of the parallel operations program (POP).
Other prerequisites for full commercial operations are the ongoing policy and regulatory approvals, Market Participants Readiness, and the ongoing SO Security Assessment. While we endeavor to have the Go-Live on 26 December 2020, this is still subject to the approval of the Department of Energy (DOE).
