Spot power prices up in October

BY LENIE LECTURA – NOVEMBER 17, 2022
from Business Mirror

Electricity spot market prices slightly went up to P9.22 per kilowatt hour in October (kWh) from P9.12 per kWh in September, the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) said Wednesday.

The operator of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) attributed the increase to the outages of power facilities.

“Outages by major coal, geothermal, oil-based, and natural gas plants remain to be one of the factors behind this movement, and generators with higher offer prices were dispatched to make up for the needed energy requirements,” IEMOP said.

Average supply for October was recorded at 13,478 megawatts (MW) or 0.89 percent lower than the figure for September. Meanwhile, the October demand rose on average by 171MW versus September’s 10,810 MW.

Regional peak demand of Visayas went up to 2,261 MW from 2,225 MW on a month-on-month comparison.  However, the Luzon peak demand fell to 11,253 MW from 11,459 MW in October.   “Given those circumstances, the average margin for October dropped by 9.86 percent and led to the imposition of the Secondary Price Cap (SPC) mechanism, a mitigating measure to safeguard consumers against sustained high WESM prices,” it said, adding that the SPC was able to cushion the prices for 52 percent and 53 percent of the time for Luzon and Visayas, respectively.

Meanwhile, the preliminary values of November show an upward trend in the supply levels, averaging at 13,651 MW. As of November 13, the WESM is also witnessing a lower demand of approximately 10,083 MW; thereby, leading to a greater margin and lower price average price of P8.08 per kWh.

IEMOP said the spot market transactions for October accounted for 13.3 percent or 969 gigawatt hours (GWh), higher than the recorded amount of spot market transactions last September which only amounted to 12.1 percent or 889 GWh.

The Effective Spot Settlement Price (ESSP) also showed an increase in value, from P9.16/kWh to P9.21/kWh in the said month.