NGCP opens tender for power reserves procurement
System operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) has formally opened its tendering process for the procurement of ancillary services or power reserves for a contract term of five years.
In a “notice of invitation to bid”, the transmission firm said it will be securing 5-year firm Ancillary Services Procurement Agreements (ASPAs) for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao grids from qualified power plant-suppliers.
The power reserves contract, NGCP specified, shall have “annual performance evaluation in which contract may be terminated if performance is no longer reliable.” The five-year contract is not extendable.
As announced, the deadline for submission of expression of interest (EOI) will be on Wednesday, February 2. Qualified bidders will be known by February 4, the slated timeframe for the availability of bid documents.
NGCP further indicated that the deadline for the submission of comments and clarifications on the bidding terms as well as the pre-bid conference will be on February 10, while the deadline of bid submissions and opening of offers will be February 16 for Luzon; February 17 for Visayas and February 18 for Mindanao.
Under the terms of reference for the auction, it was emphasized that “a power plant that is connected to NGCP-owned facility should have a dedicated connection to the generating unit used to provide the contracted capacity.”
And for embedded generators, they are required to secure “expressed consent from host-distribution utility that the embedded generator can dispatch anytime when required for AS (ancillary services) provision.”
The type of reserves that can be supplied by power plants shall be: a) regulating reserve which is equivalent to 4.0-percent of the hourly demand required or any such regulating reserve capacity to mitigate frequency variability in the grid; b) contingency reserve which refers to the most heavily loaded generating unit online and its scheduled reserve; c) dispatchable reserve or the second most heavily loaded generating unit on-line; d) reactive power reserve which shall be dependent on system voltage condition; and e) black start service reserve or a reserve capacity that can be used for power restoration.
“Offer shall be identified per unit/per sector and presented in an hourly profile to already consider the scheduled outage hours of the plant. There will be no more allocation for outage hours allowance,” NGCP stated.
For the capacity payments, NGCP had set it at P2.25 per kilowatt (kW) per scheduled hour for regulating reserve; P1.50/kW per scheduled hour for contingency reserve; P0.85/kW per scheduled hour for dispatchable reserve; and P4.00 kVAR (kilovolt amps reactive) per hour per occurrence; while for blackstart reserve, it shall be based on incidental energy payment only per occurrence.
The transmission firm further noted that penalty shall be imposed on the AS provider “for non-compliance to technical criteria or not following the dispatch instruction of NGCP,” and that shall be equivalent to “50% of the applicable rate for capacity payment multiplied by the scheduled capacity on said hour(s).”