WESM prices…

Around April 12 when the severity of the rolling brownouts were happening, the secondary cap in the WESM had also been hit – meaning, the prescribed cumulative price threshold of 19.00 per kWh within the seven-day period had already been breached.

That then prompted the WESM operator to enforce the secondary cap of 16.245 per kWh at least to cushion the impact of consumers. As it appears though, even this will not be able to fully shield ratepayers from power price spikes in the upcoming billing cycle.

WESM data likewise showed that a settlement price of P21.60 per kWh had been breached for sustained 10 hours in at least one trading day within April – and the highest prices being hit for the month were in the ranges of 116 to 127 per kWh.

Given the spikes in prices resulting from the high costs traded in the spot market – especially in the procurement of replacement power of power plants suffering from forced outages, Senate committee on energy chairman Sherwin T. Gatchalian quizzed relevant government agencies like the Department of Energy (DOE) and Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) why the consumers are being burdened with higher rates when power plants suffer from outages due to technical glitches.

“There is no disincentive for the power producers to avoid all of these (forced outages) because they are not being penalized, so I want a policy that will penalize the power producers because it’s the consumers that bear the brunt,” he pointed out.