In its October media briefing, the Market Operator observed a decrease in supply due to maintenance and forced outages of several generators. In addition, there is also a notable increase in electricity demand, the levels of which are almost the same as the pre-pandemic levels. This demand and supply interaction for the month of October (until 20 October 2021) resulted to a higher average price of 6.75 PhP/kWh compared to that of the September’s average price of 3.30 PhP/kWh.
As a result of the plant outages (forced and planned including the outages of some gas plant units due to Malampaya gas supply restriction), the average supply of 13,376 MW for this month was 6.40% lower than that of the previous month’s 14,290 MW figure. On the other hand, demand for the month of October increased from 9,928 MW to 10,250 MW or around 3.24% or 322 MW.
The same goes for the system peak demand which increased on a month-to-month comparison from 12,481 MW to 12,920 MW. This trend is reflected in the regional peak demands, with the increase in Luzon peak demand by 352 MW (3.36%) from 10,451 MW in September; Visayas peak demand also went up from 2,089 MW to 2,145 MW or around 2.68%.
As for the market transactions for September 2021, the electricity bought from the market was pegged at a lower price Effective Settlement Spot Price (ESSP) of 3.41 PhP/kWh in September compared to the ESSP of 5.13 PhP/kWh in August due to higher supply margin. The total electricity volume bought from the market last September was pegged at 6,857 GWh or 7.8% of the total volume which is lower than the spot percentage of 8.6% last August 2021.
In continuing its thrust to deliver excellent and world-class market operations service, the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) initiated a number of stakeholder engagement activities to discuss the latest market updates and address the concerns of the participants regarding the market operations.
These include the Reserve Market Overview and Training to discuss the impending integration of trading of Reserves or Ancillary Services in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM). This month, the Market Operator is also conducting meetings with the major stakeholder organizations through its Kumustahan sessions as a preparation for its Market Participants’ Update (MPU) this November.
