The Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines said Wednesday electricity spot prices in the Luzon and Visayas grids declined by P0.60 per kilowatt-hour in the first half of July.
IEMOP, operator of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, linked the lower spot market prices to decreased power demand during the period as a result of the rainy season and tropical depression Dodong.
“Despite intermittent hot weather caused by El Niño weather conditions, overall demand for electricity went down, leading to an 8.9-percent decrease in spot prices or P6.07 per kWh, for the Luzon and Visayas markets compared to the previous month’s P6.67 pesos per kWh,” IEMOP said.
The lower WESM rates will be reflected in the billing of power utilities and electric cooperatives in August.
IEMOP head of corporate strategy and communications department Isidro Cacho Jr. expressed hope the downtrend in electricity prices would continue until the end of the year.
“So far, we do not see any unforeseen outages. I think we will see further downtrend especially toward the end of this year. It is cooler toward the fourth quarter,” Cacho said.
“Unless I think El Nino will be more intense toward the end of this year and until first quarter of next year. Hopefully, there will be not much impact on the hydro plants,” he said.
Spot prices in Mindanao saw a slight increase of P0.49 per kWh to P3.83 per kWh from P3.34 per kWh in June.
IEMOP said that despite the slight increase, it was still 38.33 percent lower than in May.
It said the tamer power demand levels also resulted in reduced imposition of the secondary price cap at the WESM.
“As the energy sector adapts to the cooler weather, market data for July reveals a decrease of 155 MW in average electricity demand for Luzon and Visayas, dropping from 11,641 MW in June to 11,486 MW,” the market operator said.
It said Mindanao experienced a slight increase in average demand from 1,805 MW to 1,809 MW.
IEMOP observed a new peak demand record of 12,522 MW for Luzon on July 6, 2023 at 2:15 p.m., which was 3.5 percent higher than the previous year’s peak recorded on May 12.
It said no significant issues were encountered resulting in ample average supply margins for the Luzon-Visayas and Mindanao grids.
Supply margins for Luzon-Visayas stood at 2,935 MW, while Mindanao averaged 1,261 MW.
The generation supply mix in Luzon and Visayas for June 2023 received a boost from the natural gas plants at 17.1 percent.