From thousands of unresolved applications for power supply agreements (PSA) prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) indicated that the remaining cases it will need to act on now just hovers at around 600 pending applications.

“We tried to resolve as much as we can,” ERC Chairperson Agnes T. Devanadera said, emphasizing that even the 600 pending cases were already granted with provisional authorities.

With the interim approvals given to the power supply deals, she pointed out that these are already being enforced, hence, there had been no disruption of electricity services to consumers.

The PSA applications of the distribution utilities in particular are lodged with the ERC, so the rates they had underwritten with their power suppliers will be given go-signal by the industry regulator before these cost items are passed on in the electric bills of their customers.

Devanadera explained “even if a PSA is pending, that does not mean we’re not able to implement the PSA. What’s really pending here is: we have not reviewed and issued the final authority.”

She conveyed that this pace of decision-making entails that there is already temporary approval and the final rate will just be subsequently evaluated and will be incorporated in the final decision of the Commission.

Devanadera qualified that on the duration of the pandemic, the pace of review, hearing and promulgation of the cases lodged with the regulatory body had been faster because majority of the processes had been carried out virtually, therefore, the ERC personnel were not hurdled by traffic mess on the roads.

“You’ll be surprised that our ERC performance during the pandemic is 21-percent higher than the previous year, because there’s no traffic. We were able to concentrate from 9:00am to 5:00pm, so we even came up with better accomplishments,” the ERC chief stressed.

Apart from PSA cases, the other backlogs on ERC dockets in the past three to four years had been applications for certificates of compliance (COCs) primarily for power generators which will need that stamp of approval from the regulator before they can schedule their facilities for commercial operations.

The regulatory body also issued several rules and sorted several regulation frameworks at the height of the pandemic, including the next phase of regulatory reset of the power utilities, such as those for transmission operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines; the distribution utilities as well as the electric cooperatives.

The performance-based rate setting (PBR) methodology of the restructured power sector casts forward revenue recoveries of the power utilities; and true-up or cost adjustments will just eventually be enforced on the yearly review of the rates reflected in the bills of consumers.