The average price of electricity sold on the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) for the whole country increased by 15.3 percent in August, the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) said.
Data provided by IEMOP on Wednesday showed the average price of electricity on WESM stood at P4.59 per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the entire Philippines as of August 25, compared with P3.99 per kWh in July.
IEMOP traced the rise in prices to higher demand and a drop in available power supply for the month.
Data also showed that total average demand in the country for the period rose 1.7 percent to 14,052 megawatts (MW) from 13,812 MW, while average supply decreased by 0.7 percent to 20,611 MW from 20,754 MW.
Isidro Cacho Jr., IEMOP vice president for trading operations, said that historically, power demand during the last quarter of the year increases, especially as manufacturing companies ramp up their production of goods for the Christmas season.
Cacho said the rise in WESM costs may consequently influence an upward push in rates for customers of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), which may be reflected in their September bills.
“It might result in a slight impact, but I cannot say definitely how much. Meralco is the largest customer in Luzon, so there is definitely an impact,” Cacho further said.
The average price per kWh on the WESM for Luzon in August stood at P3.76 per kWh, down 4.1 percent from July’s P3.92 per kWh. Average demand in the region rose by 1.8 percent in August to 9,882 MW from the previous month’s 9,710 MW, while the average supply went up by 0.7 percent to 14,646 MW from 14,540 MW.
As for Visayas, the average WESM price for the period was at P6.40, up 45.7 percent from July’s P4.39 per kWh, accompanied by 1.5 percent growth in demand to 2,027 MW from 1,998 MW, and a 5 percent downward adjustment in power supply in the region to 2,405 MW from 2,530 MW.
In the Mindanao grid, the average WESM price surged 75.4 percent to P6.66 from July’s P3.80 per kWh. Demand was also up by 1.9 percent at 2,144 MW from 2,104 MW, while available power supply was down by 3.4 percent at 3,561 MW from 3,685 MW.
IEMOP does not count the entire month in its data, given that the billing period from WESM ends every 25th day of the month.
