ORMOC CITY , Philippines — The Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday morning (Thursday, June 6) heard a petition of an electric cooperative here to purchase power from the GN Power Mariveles Coal Plant Ltd (GN-PMCPL) based at Bataan at 4.397 per kilowatthour for the next five years.
Leyte Electric Cooperative V (Leyeco V) general manager Juanito Jorda told ERC that the power purchase and sale agreement is to buy the coop's baseload requirement of at least five megawatts a day.
The purchase agreement, which is still subject to ERC approval, went through a bidding process and it was the GN-PMCPL that submitted the lowest price.
The hearing was held at the Leyeco V compound with lawyer Joel Bontuyan of ERC as hearing officer, assisted by Jobert Dizon.
GN-PMCPL's vice president for sales and trading Ariel Bilaoen assured the ERC that the price quoted is insulated from any increase through five years, and informed further the commission that the price would remain the same for the coop for a longer contract of 15 years.
The Leyeco V board of directors however settled for a 5-year term but asked to put on record the Bataan firm's offer of the same prive over the next 10 years.
Jorda, for his part, explained the importance of Leyeco V's power purchase agreement considering that, at present, the coop is getting its baseload from the PSALM through the Leyte Unified Geothermal plant without a contract.
The rest of the power supply the coop gets from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, the price of which is very volatile due to the bigger demand compared to the available uncontracted supply, said Jorda.
In a presentation about the bigger picture of the power supply scenario in the whole of the Visayas, it was shown that the Department of Energy itself projected the power supply need of the whole region would be 2,150 Mw from 2010 to 2030.
Based on that projection, there is already a shortage right now. (FREEMAN)