NGCP told to formulate sked for contracted reserve capacities

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Energy has asked the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) and the Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC) to formulate a central scheduling and dispatch of contracted reserve capacities or back up power for the country’s trading floor of electricity.

The DOE said the central scheduling of energy and contracted reserves – which will provide a view of all generation capacity of the grid – will further prepare power players for full commercial operations of the reserve market.

The DOE moved the schedule of the proposed reserve market as the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has yet to approve the Pricing and Cost Recovery Mechanism (PRCM) of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) Reserve Market.

“A central scheduling and dispatch of energy and contracted reserve capacities for WESM shall be in effect as part of the trial operations in order for the DOE to monitor all available generation capacity in both energy and reserve and to prepare the participates for the eventual commercial operation of the WESM reserve market,” the DOE said.

The DOE said market operator PEMC recommended the deferment of commercial operations pending the regulatory approval of the PCRM of the WESM Reserve Market and the completion of the registration of ancillary service providers.

PEMC recommended to continue with the trial operations while at the same time implement central scheduling of energy and contracted reserves in order to view all available generation capacity of the grid and thereby take necessary policy actions to immediately address the adverse effects of an imminent supply deficiency including but not limited to directing certain capacities to be made available to the grid.

At present, reserve capacities are managed by the NGCP for the secure and reliable operation of the grid.