WESM seeks creation of Reliability Council

To monitor, penalize power plant outages

The operator of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) is proposing the establishment of Reliability Council that shall be in charge of monitoring and enforcing penalties versus recurrent outages of power plants.

According to Philippine Electricity Market Corporation (PEMC) President Melinda L. Ocampo, the proposal is now being sorted out by the Grid Management Committee (GMC) which would in turn lodge the final proposal to the Energy Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy.

The significant reduction in power plant outages, according to Ocampo, has been pulling down prices in the electricity spot market.

This is contrary to the ‘perfect storm’ events of November-December 2013 when series of power plants’ forced outages resulted in extreme spikes in electricity rates.

Ocampo qualified though that ‘standards’ must still be established to ensure the efficient operation of power plants.

“In other countries, they have Reliability Council which monitors and sets standards on power plant outages,” the PEMC chief executive has expounded.

And if the outages would go beyond the allowable levels as provided under their respective power supply agreements, Ocampo emphasized that penalty system shall also be instituted.

She told media that the energy department actually mulled over the propounded Reliability Council; and they intend to flesh out the parameters with the GMC and the regulatory body.

“They (DOE and ERC) are considering and in fact – collating the appropriate information to be able to establish the standards,” Ocampo stressed.

With many old power plants in the country’s power system, forced outages are persistent dilemmas among industries. In instances when these occurrences hit any of the power grids, consumers suffered not only from rolling power interruptions but also of higher rate. (MMV)