Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) rates by end-September were down by nearly half due to sufficient supply and cooler temperatures.
The Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC) reported a considerable dip in the final effective settlement spot prices (ESSPs) for September 2016’s billing period at P2.86 per kilowatt-hour from P4.17 per kWh last month.
ESSPs are the average prices paid by customers for energy bought from the spot market operated by the PEMC.
The drop was associated with adequate power supply from power plants and cooler temperature with the upcoming Christmas season.
“Based on our assessment, the dip in market prices is due to confluence of increased supply due to higher availability of generating units and lower demand attributable to colder temperature,” PEMC training and communications manager Philip Adviento said.
As for the supply, around 15.09 percent of the total market transactions were from the electricity market while 84.91 percent were generated through power supply agreement.
“The September billing period showed a marked increase in the share of electricity bought in the spot market compared to the monthly average of 8-10 percent sourced by wholesale customers. WESM truly works as it provides a viable option for wholesale customers in the provision of electric supply to end-users,” PEMC president Melinda Ocampo said.
Meanwhile, coal remains to be the dominant fuel in the country’s generation mix at 43.33 percent, followed by natural gas at 25.8 percent, and oil – based contributed at 1.5 percent, WESM data said.
Geothermal is the highest contributing renewable energy source at 12.5 percent, while hydropower supplied 7.7 percent. Other RE sources like solar, wind, run – of – river and biomass had 3.7 percent.