VisMin Consumers Face Higher Power Bills Amidst Coal Plant Shutdowns

MANILA, Philippines — The forced shutdowns of several coal power plants in the Visayas and Mindanao have led to record-high spot power prices, with consumers set to pay more for their electricity bills this month. In a media briefing, Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) said power traded at Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) surged by 64.9 percent to P18.59 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in the Visayas. Higher rates were booked in Mindanao, hitting P19.56 per kWh, an 88-percent jump from a month ago’s P10.39 per kWh. The hefty upward adjustments in WESM prices in the two main islands were attributed to the outages at major coal plants, forcing the market to rely on more expensive energy sources. “We have outages that contributed a lot to the decline in supply in the Visayas. I think [the prices that] we’ve seen so far [are] the worst,” said Isidro Cacho, Jr., IEMOP’s head of trading operations. “The P18 and P19 are actually the highest prices that I’ve seen in 20 years of WESM operations,” he added. IEMOP is the operator of WESM, an avenue where power is traded between producers and distributors to boost their supply. For months now, the Visayas has been under numerous yellow and red alerts due to tight electricity supply. Mindanao is likewise facing a power crunch due to the forced shutdown of some of its coal facilities. During the billing period, which covered July 26 to Aug. 25, the supply in the Visayas and Mindanao declined by 2.6 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively. Demand, on the other hand, went up by 0.7 percent for the Visayas and 5 percent for Mindanao. Luzon, meanwhile, saw its WESM prices drop by 34.2 percent to P4.80 per kWh. /cb