The Philippine Independent Power Producers Association, Inc. (PIPPA) is standing its ground on the secondary price cap and reliability standards.
The Manila Standard reported that PIPPA is aware of the directive of the government, and the petition the organization filed with the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to ease the reliability benchmark rule, which limited the permitted number of power plant outages, would yield stable and affordable energy over time.
PIPPA further iterated that the petitions regarding the secondary price cap and reliability requirements are a response to the energy industry’s need to change with the times.
Furthermore, PIPPA requested the removal of the present price ceilings on spot markets, which shield consumers from unreasonable electricity costs during periods of low supply and strong demand.
However, the Power for People Coalition (P4P), an advocacy group focusing on consumer rights and energy issues, expressed reservations about PIPPA’s petitions. According to the coalition, these petitions seek to eliminate penalties for power plant outages by their member companies and remove price caps that protect consumers from fluctuations in power prices.
P4P further argued that energy users have the right to have access to dependable and reasonably priced electricity and stated that these petitions would absolve PIPPA of responsibility if they failed to perform the services they were supposed to and guaranteed maximum profits at the expense of consumers.
With a total capacity of about 13,000 megawatts (MW) as of 2020, PIPPA is made up of the major power-producing companies in the country.