Asian Energy Advisors

Do we have a spot market or not?

Niel Mugas at the end of his article today makes a statement I’ve seen dozens of times:

The program [industrial customer choice] was supposedly unconditional but MERALCO has asked that its IPPs be dispatched on minimum energy quantity to run their plants at cost-efficient levels.

But under the WESM rules, it is the Market Operator or WESM that determines the dispatch of each and every unit (and they took great pains during ERC Hearings to point out that bilateral contracts have nothing to do with this) and then transmits those instructions to the System Operator (Transco) to implement. There are clear, market-based and system-security-based mechanisms and protocols for determining which plants get dispatched and when.

What does Meralco or Napocor have to do with this?

Unless, of course, we don’t really, really have a spot market yet.