The Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines said Thursday it saw an increase in the average price of electricity in March from the previous month as demand grew and surpassed pre-pandemic levels at the start of the dry season.
IEMOP, the market operator of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, said it recorded a higher average price of electricity at P6.97 per kilowatt-hour in March, compared to P6.19 per kWh in February.
It said demand averaged 10,600 megawatts in March, up 8.4 percent from the previous month’s figure of 8,200 MW.
The agency attributed the rise in demand in the system to the imposition of Alert Level 1 in Metro Manila on March 1, which was later on followed by the implementation of a lesser restrictive alert level status in other provinces on March 16.
The peak demand was recorded on March 23 which amounted to 13,749MW. This surpassed the peak demand of 11,985 MW in February, IEMOP said.
“The said value was noted to surpass the peak demand levels of the previous years during the same month and even that of the annual peak demand during the pre-pandemic year [2019],” it said.
The same trend was also evident in the regional peak demand in both Luzon and Visayas.
Luzon peak demand was recorded at 11,617 MW which exceeded the annual figures from 2019 to 2021.
The Visayas peak demand amounted to 2,143 MW in March, also breaching the pre-pandemic levels.
IEMOP said the increasing demand was accompanied by sufficient supply levels which amounted to around 13,456 MW or 5.41 percent (695 MW) greater than that of February.
“This is mostly due to the resumption of operations by the generators that were on outage at the earlier periods of the year,” it said.
IEMOP said it would closely monitor the market results in line with its commitment to provide transparent, efficient and reliable market solutions and services that will power a brighter future for every Filipino household.