Consumer group Power for People Coalition (P4P) has welcomed the amendments being pushed by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) on the implementation of price mitigation measures in the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM).
The group acknowledged in a statement Friday, July 2 that the measures "offer some level of protection to consumers from unjust price hikes".
Despite the positive development, P4P said it hopes the "that more steps will be taken to erase the possibility of abuses by profit-driven power players".
The ERC announced that instead of the previously implemented 172-hour or five-day rolling period, the secondary price cap (SPC) of P6,245/megawatt hours (MWh) would now be triggered upon breach of a P9,000/MWh over 72 hours or three days.
A MWh represents one million watts of electricity being used for an hour.
"Year in and out, we’ve seen how easy it is for power companies to jack up electricity prices with overlapping and prolonged outages. The five-day period prior to the implementation of a secondary price cap was too long a wait before consumers are offered a shield from ridiculously high charges, and by then their electricity bills are already sure to reflect unfair rates. Limiting that to three days is certainly a reprieve for consumers,” said Gerry Arances, convenor of P4P.
P4P said that the regulatory body should assess the possibility of shortening the rolling period even further.
“We look forward to the amended resolution that would detail alterations in the SPC mechanism and Cumulative Price Threshold. We note, however, that these alone cannot fully protect consumers from power sector abuses," Arances said.
"Demanding accountability from players responsible for the lack of supply in the grid despite Luzon having sufficient installed capacity, penalizing them, and making sure power supply manipulations will not happen moving forward should be utmost priorities,” he added, obviously referring to the spate of rotating power outages that occured in the Luzon grid last month due to alleged supply shortfall.
The P4P also urged the ERC, Department of Energy (DOE), and the Senate Committee on Energy to fast-track investigations on power plants that went on outage earlier this year, leading up to the red and yellow alerts in May and June.
This includes two coal-fired power plants that have been out of operation since December 2020 and February 2021: the Sem-Calaca coal plant unit 2 and GN Power Mariveles coal plant unit 1, respectively.
"We are disappointed that our energy overseers turned a blind eye to power plants that have gone far beyond allowable outage periods, conducting investigations only after Filipino households rotating blackouts.
"Before hailing new plants as the solution to our power woes, we urge them to get to the bottom of who is benefitting the most from these unscheduled and prolonged outages. It’s definitely not consumers,” Arances said.