LAGUINDINGAN, Misamis Oriental – Northern Mindanao’s biggest electric cooperative, the Misamis Oriental 1 Rural Electric Service Cooperative (Moresco 1), is all set for the implementation of Mindanao’s Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) by second quarter of 2018.
Speaking during the release of the company’s yearend report, Moresco 1 institutional services manager Edna Diango said that even as the utility has raised concerns over certain provisions in the WESM implementation, they are obliged to follow the law.
After 12 months of ongoing trial by the Philippine Electricity Marketing Corporation (PEMC), WESM in Mindanao is set to go full blast by May next year.
Diango said that in the meantime, Moresco 1 remains opposed to the P32 per kilowatt hour maximum cap.
“What will happen to the unused power supply that has already been paid for if we accommodate the spot market,” Diango asked rhetorically.
Moresco 1 also plans to defer the implementation of WESM while the Luzon-Visayas grid has not yet been interconnected to Mindanao’s.
“We have lots of power here. We can sell to the grid in Luzon and Visayas and that will really pull the prices in the spot market significantly down,” Diango said.
But Diango said that in their dialogue with Department of Energy (DOE) officials in Davao last week, DOE expressed disapproval to their proposal to defer the WESM implementation.
“They said it was just too costly for the project to be postponed because every infrastructure and system in the trial run by all stakeholders is already in place,” she said.
Once implemented, WESM will be a direct competition to conventional electricity generation here that runs from power plants fed directly to the grid. (Mark D. Francisco/PNA)
