DoE shelves power spot mart plan for Visayas

By Riza Recio

04/09/2008

The Department of Energy (DoE) had decided to defer the opening of the Visayas Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) due to inadequate capacity in transmission and generation facilities, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes said yesterday.

The Wesm operator, Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (Pemc), said a tight reserve situation will lead to volatile and relatively high WESM spot prices.

The Intelligent Energy Systems (IES), a consultancy firm based in Australia engaged by the DoE through a grant from the World Bank-administered Policy and Human Resources Development (PHRD) fund, recently released its final report on the proposed Wesm Visayas, on which the DoE based its decision to suspend the spot market opening in the region.

The report covered market participants’ readiness, system readiness, supply and demand situation, competition among traders, formulation of market power mitigating measures, provision of market information to all market participants, possible Wesm rules amendments and development of a long-term plan for financial transmission rights.

Reyes said the DoE will carefully review the findings and recommendations of IES before coming up with a final decision on the necessity of the opening of a spot market in the Visayas.

The PEMC earlier said that DoE is expected to give the go-signal for the Wesm commercial operations in the Visayas region early this year.

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