The initial average price of electricity in the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM) for June dropped to P6.53 per kilowatt hour (kWh) from last month’s P7.66 per kwh, according to the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) said .
That is almost a 15 percent decline but may change as the data collected was only until June 20.
IEMOP said initial average power demand for June slightly dropped to 11,052 megawatts (MW) from last month’s 11,091 MW as average supply also mildly grew to 13,458 MW from 13,219 MW.
“We’re approaching the rainy season. Although Ilijan (power plant) is expected to shutdown on July 1, we expect hydropower plants to come in. We expect this will offset the Ilijan shutdown as (the production of) hydro plants are already picking up,” said Julius Bunyi, IEMOP corporate strategy and program management manager, in an online briefing yesterday.
“Assuming we’re operating at pre-pandemic levels, we expect demand to decrease with the rainy season and decreasing temperature and increased availability of power plants. We expect an augmentation of our supply despite prolonged outages,” he added.
The figures collated by IEMOP only reflect the situation in the Luzon and Visayas grids as Mindanao is not yet connected to the WESM.
