DOE to improve power spot mart in M’danao

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Energy (DOE) will implement an enhanced Interim Mindanao Electricity Market (IMEM), the trading floor for electricity in the Mindanao grid, as part of efforts to address the prevailing power shortage in the island.

Residents have been complaing of up to 15-hour rotational blackouts in some parts of Mindanao since the Feb. 27 island-wide outage.

The enhanced trading platform will allow for re-nomination three hours before the actual trading interval, which will give electric cooperatives the flexibility to adjust their IMEM exposure by allowing them to factor in the actual available output of their power providers, and the demand requirements for the particular trading hour.

This is an improvement from the previous day-ahead market for the management of all available power supply in the region, Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said.

Furthermore, the DOE will implement demand-side bidding with electric cooperatives. This means that cooperatives, as distribution utilities, will set the price of power and minimize the price volatility for customers, instead of power producers.

Trial operations of the enhanced IMEM are targeted within the month after it was suspended last February following the power system collapse in the region, Petilla said.

Another measure is the so-called Minda-nao Interruptible Load Program (ILP), which serves as an option for distribution utilities such as Davao Light and Power Co. and electric cooperatives to ask their big load customers to serve their own power needs by using their own generator sets in the event that all available mechanisms implemented to ensure supply are not enough to cover the demand for electricity.

Yet another measure is the Modular Genset Program (MGP), offered as early as July 2013. It remains available on voluntary basis and gives options for electric power providers and consumers to manage their requirements.

To date, over P100 million out of the P4-billion fund sourced from the Malampaya fund have been currently provided to Mindanao ECs which willingly availed of the program, according to the National Electrification Administration (NEA).

Alongside these measures, the DOE continues to encourage the entry of new power investments as a long-term solution for the Mindanao power situation, Petilla said.

“Through the DOE’s aggressive promotion of the country’s energy portfolio to power developers since 2010, power projects including the 300-megawatt (MW) coal-fired Therma South Energy project and the 200-MW Southern Mindanao coal-fired in Sarangani have started construction and are expected to come online in 2015. Meanwhile, the 405-MW coal-fired power plant of FDC Utilities Inc. in Misamis Oriental is targeted to come online by September 2016,” Petilla said.

Moreover, the Mindanao supply situation is likely to improve with the partial availability of 100 MW out of the 210 MW of the Steag coal-fired power plant on Tuesday.