I was at the Expository Hearing and pre-trial conference Monday for the PEMC filing on Pricing and Cost Recovery Mechanism (PCRM) for Reserves in the Philippine WESM.
The Reserve PCRM is intended to apply to all reserves that are to be traded in the WESM and will supersede the Ancillary Services Cost Recovery Mechanism (AS-CRM) of the Transco. The AS-CRM will then apply to other ancillary services that are not traded in the WESM as well as to reserve regions or cost recovery zones where the WESM reserve market is not yet in operation.
The four products that are being addressed are:
- Regulating Reserve
- Contingency Reserve
- Dispatchable Reserve
- Interruptible Load
PEMC made a presentation on the filing concepts, which I have a hard copy of. Why don’t they post this on the WESM site?! Why doesn’t ERC post it?
Five intervenors requested to be parties of record:
- Meralco
- Napocor
- Transco (or NTC)
- GMC (Grid Management Committee)
- PSALM
No PEPOA. No Cooperatives.
In the pre-trial conference, the March 6th start date for public hearings was scrapped and the first hearings will be on March 12 & 13 (half-days hearings 9am-12pm)
I don’t have a copy of the PEMC filing made on January 8th (I don’t understand why this isn’t posted publicly at both the ERC and WESM) or a copy of any of the pre-trial briefs and didn’t capture all the concepts in my notes – but PEMC requested in its filing that the Commission decide on just one issue: the methodology.
But the Commission (and intervenors) wants to expand the ruling to cover other issues – they may have ended up with eight issues for decision, I don’t recall exactly.
Importantly, the Commission added “market readiness” as an issue to be addressed – i.e. are there enough participants for a robust market and are there market power issues and, if so, are there mitigating mechanisms that should be considered.
The GMC is concerned about applying “zonal pricing” in the Visayas grid, where a more granular (nodal) pricing mechanism may be more appropriate (unlike Luzon).
The Commission requested PEMC to submit a “test run” and PEMC indicated that could be provided by March 15.
Here’s a copy of the ERC’s Notice of Public Hearing.