The Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines said Tuesday average electricity prices at the spot market for Luzon and Visayas went down by P1.69 per kilowatt-hour in the early part of March amid cooler temperature and availability of natural gas plants.
“The natural gas facilities are back in normal operations, and we can see that we had an increase in terms of supply on average by 426 MW [megawatts],” IEMOP corporate communications manager Jocell Co said.
IEMOP is the operator of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market which also launched the Mindanao market on Jan. 26 this year.
“Demand it still at the level 9,826 MW, a little lower by 82 MW for the first few days of the March billing period, and you have an increase somehow of our average margin by 536 MW. So far the average billing period that we are seeing for March is P5.78 per kWh,” Co said.
Average electricity prices at the WESM rose to P7.47 per kWh in February because of tight supply.
The supply margins improved to 3,403 MW as of March 12 from 2,867 MW in February. A tight supply margin results in elevated spot market prices.
“In the past days, the temperature is cooler, so somehow this helps to still maintain sufficiency in terms of available supply to meet our demand requirement,” Co said.
Meanwhile, the average prices at the Mindanao WESM increased to P6.31 per kWh in the first 12 days of March from P5.20 per kWh in February.
Supply in Mindanao declined by 260 MW to 3,006 MW in March while demand slightly rose to 1,721 MW from 1,700 MW in February. The average supply margin was also lower at 1,082 MW from 1,343 MW in February.
The majority of Mindanao customers’ requirements in the February supply month were served by coal plants at 62.54 percent, followed by hydro plants at 30.39 percent, and geothermal plants at 4.44 percent, with 13.90 percent of total consumption bought through the WESM.