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By Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo, Reporter
The Philippine Electric Market Corp. (PEMC) said
the recent spike in consumers’ power bills under franchise areas
of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) in April came about because the
Lopez-owned utility bought electricity in the spot market during
times when prices were high.
Meralco’s spot purchases of electricity
averaged P8.94 per kilowatt hour in the March 2008 supply month,
PEMC, which operates the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM),
said in a statement. This was significantly higher than the average
of the spot market for this month, it added.
“During this period, Meralco was mostly buying
during the peak hours when electricity prices were high.
Furthermore, Meralco purchased only 8.07 percent of its total demand
from the WESM,” PEMC said.
Meralco earlier said it had bought 9.15 percent
of its power supply from the spot market in March.
The higher prices in the spot market were driven
by the rise in temperature causing higher demand during the period.
“Just like any market, prices change depending
on supply and demand, and with the onset of summer, increased
temperature caused us to use more electricity, which [usage] results
in higher spot prices,” Lasse Holopainen, PEMC president, said.
Besides the increase in temperature, there was
also a marked decline in the availability and dispatch of coal
plants from 29.9 percent in February to 21.3 percent in March with
Calaca and Masinloc on outage. Combined, the plants have over 1,200
megawatts in capacity.
Besides Calaca and Masinloc, other plants were
on intermittent outages during the period as well.
“When the cheaper generators are not
available, the prices rise as well, as we are forced to dispatch
more expensive plants,” Holopainen said.
Much of the energy sold in the spot market was
traded by government-owned and government-administered generators of
the National Power Corp. (Napocor) and Power Sector Assets and
Liabilities Management.
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