PRICES at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) during this warm, dry season may increase due to the expected growth in peak demand in all major island grids of the country, according to the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) said.
IEMOP said peak demand may grow by around 6 percent to 13,273 megawatts (MW) in the Luzon grid and by 7 percent to 2,628 MW in Visayas. Mindanao will likely record the highest peak demand growth of 8 percent to 2,650 MW.
Last year’s peak demand stood at 12,550 MW in Luzon, 2,458 MW in Visayas and 2,315 MW in Mindanao.
Isidro Cacho Jr., IEMOP head of trading operations, expressed hope the expected WESM price increase will not be further aggravated by outages of power plants. As a policy, there are no maintenance shutdowns for plants in April, May and June.
Cacho said the full operation of the Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Project that allows the sharing of excess power capacities in the entire grid could help any possible WESM price increase.
Based on initial data from IEMOP, the increase in average spot market power rates for March was mainly due to lower power margins amid higher demand.
As of March 24, average price per kilowatt hour (kWh) in WESM for the entire Philippines is at P5.46 which is 35.5 percent higher from full month February’s P4.03 per kWh.
IEMOP said total average demand in the country for the period went up 6.6 percent to 13,185 MW from 12,372 MW.
Average supply increased by 0.73 percent to 18,956 MW from 18,818 MW making power margin for the period down by 18.9 percent to 3,860 MW from 4,757 MW.
