Prices continue to drop in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) as the country experiences intermittent rain showers and colder weather as the third quarter of the year comes to a close.
As the August billing settles at an average price of 4.76 PhP/kWh, the Market Operator foresees the prices to drop further this month with the first half of September averaging only 3.10 PhP/kWh[1]. The price drop is attributed to ample supply, mostly from coal power plants, and a decrease in demand from 10,111 MW last August to 9,824 MW in September, or by 2.83%.
However, the system peak demand increased slightly on a month-to-month comparison from 12,272 to 12,481 MW – figures that are relatively near to that of the past year. The regional peak demand for Luzon also increased by 186 MW from the previous’ months record of 10,265 MW; contrary to that of the Visayas grid which decreased by 51 MW from 2,140 MW.
On the other hand, the Effective Settlement Spot Price (ESSP) decreased from 7.12 PhP/kWh in July to 5.13 PhP/kWh in August. This trend has been observed since the month of June given the persisting colder weather conditions. The total spot percentage also decreased for this period by 9.6% to 8.6%. The generation for the August spot transactions was recorded at 6,989 GWh.
Prices in Visayas were also affected by congestion due to the outage of a damaged Cebu-Negros Submarine Cable. Thus, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) issued an order last 20 September 2021, suspending collection of congestion charges. IEMOP already submitted to ERC, for its confirmation, the guidelines to implement the ERC directives.
Meanwhile, the WESM Central Scheduling continues to be implemented in Mindanao. IEMOP noted that there is a generally sufficient supply level to cover and support Mindanao’s demand requirements which decreased during the period of August up to the onset of September.
[1] Data covers up to 21 September 2021.
