ONLY a few electric cooperatives (ECs) in Mindanao have attended the recent two-day onsite registration for the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), the electricity market operator said.
Independent Electricity Market Operator in the Philippines (IEMOP) has conducted two batches of registration activities for ECs, bulk users, and embedded generators on February 7 and February 20 at Cagayan de Oro City and Davao City, respectively.
IEMOP chief corporate strategy and communications officer Isidro Cacho Jr. said they target to enroll a total of 45 power industry stakeholders from Mindanao in the Wesm but 26 of them, mostly ECs, have not yet completed their requirements for registration.
He said they have invited the remaining unregistered ECs for the activity but only 13 of them joined and processed their registration.
“[The] Grid generators and private DUs (distribution utilities), ok na lahat sa registration namin. Kaya ECs, bulk users, and embedded generators na lang problems namin,” Cacho said.
Department of Energy-Mindanao (DOE-Mindanao) senior specialist Darwin Galang said DUs and ECs have yet to have their documents evaluated.
Based on the data of the energy department, only one of them is officially registered out of the 45 trading participants from Mindanao. Most of them are still processing their prudential requirements.
Wesm was initially scheduled to go live on the last week of January this year but due to several issues on the compliance of requirements of trading participants, the registration was instead extended.
Although the implementation of the Wesm is already behind its target date, Cacho said there were calls from the trading participants to start the operation of Wesm after the National Grid of the Philippines completes its P52-billion Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Project (MVIP).
“There is a clamor to operate the Wesm there in time with the interconnection. Target na ma-complete yung interconnection in December 2020,” he said.
In the MVIP, NGCP will install cable terminal stations in the Municipality of Santander, Cebu, and Dapitan City, Zamboanga del Norte.
The terminal stations will serve as landing points of the two 92-kilometer submarine cables which will carry around 450 megawatts (MW) of power from the Visayas and Mindanao, and vice versa.