Officials of two electric cooperatives in Negros Occidental have lauded the response of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to intervene on the concerns over the recent high electricity cost in Western Visayas.
In a statement on Thursday, lawyer Dan Pondevilla, acting general manager and project supervisor of Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco), said the ERC intervention came after the electric cooperatives’ coordination meeting with the agency, Department Energy (DOE), National Electrification Administration (NEA), and the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) last week.
“It was my suggestion for the ERC to study and intervene in the price of electricity spot market,” said Pondevilla, also the concurrent general manager of Northern Negros Electric Cooperative (Noneco).
He said the ERC also promised to find remedies to control the price in the market that caused the spike in electricity rates.
In a four-page letter dated Sept. 20, ERC chairperson and chief executive officer Agnes Devanadera called the attention of Philippine Electricity Spot Market Corp. (PEMC) president Leonido Pulido III to the issue of high settlement amounts in the market, and high electricity billings of consumers in Negros and Panay.
The PEMC is a non-stock, non-profit corporation that served as the autonomous group market operator and governing body of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM).
Devanadera told Pulido that “as you are aware, the Cebu-Negros 138 kilovolt (kV) Line tripped on June 15, as reported by the NGCP, due to the damage caused by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) on one of the lines of the Cebu-Negros Submarine Cable during its conduct of an amphibious dredging in the mouth of Bio-os River, Barangay Pondol, Amlan in Negros Oriental.”
She said the damage “has consequently resulted to decreased transfer capacity of the Cebu-Negros Submarine Cable thus, resulting to congestion that limits the availability of the supply,” and “costlier diesel plants have been tapped to compensate for the load required, ultimately setting the marginal costs that define current pricing in Negros and Panay.”
She noted that electricity prices have also been influenced by high line rental amounts due to congestion and as reported to the ERC, significant increases in the electricity rates of consumers in Panay and Negros have been observed beginning in their June billing.
“The commission cannot agree less, considering the circumstances detailed above. Specifically, the damaging of the Cebu-Negros Submarine Cable, was not caused by the consumers, but rather by negligence, which responsible parties should be made to account for,” Devanadera said.
“As such, the commission is of the view that the congestion charges, and other charges, that are attributable to the incident, should not be charged to the consumers,” she added.
Devanadera directed PEMC to “stop the collection of congestion charges and other applicable charges from customers, including but not limited to line rentals, attributable to the outage of the Cebu-Negros Submarine Cable, until the complete restoration and operationalization of the said transmission line, or until a more applicable pricing and settlement solution is ordered by the commission”.
She said “congestion charges and other applicable charges attributable to the said line outage and are already collected for the billing months of June to August 2021 shall be refunded to the consumers within the period equivalent to the number of months covered by the subject collections”.
Devanadera also ordered to “defer the payment of congestion and other related charges to generation companies affected by the incident until the complete restoration and operationalization of the said transmission line, or until a more applicable pricing and settlement solution is ordered by the commission”.
Ceneco president Jojit Yap said the ERC’s intervention is a welcome development for the power consumers and hoped that these measures would result in lower prices in the WESM.
Ceneco’s coverage area includes the cities of Bacolod, Bago, Talisay and Silay as well as the towns of Murcia and Don Salvador Benedicto.
Source: Philippines News Agency