PEMC recognizes market participant compliance to the WESM Rules

The Philippine Electricity Market Corporation (PEMC) recently conducted the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) Compliance Officers (WCO) Summit 2020. In compliance with government health protocols, the week-long event was held online.

“The WCO Summit 2020 is a venue to strengthen the culture of compliance and integrity among electricity market participants by enhancing the knowledge base of the WCOs and the WESM Enforcement Officers (WEO) with the latest developments in the Philippine power bourse,” said PEMC Chairman Noel V. Aboboto.

The week-long online event included presentations on the proposed WESM Code of Ethics, the proposed new Penalty Manual, etc. The virtual conference also provided the platform to acknowledge the individual and collective efforts of the WCOs and WEOs to comply with the WESM Rules through the WCO Summit 2020 Awards.

“The WCO Summit 2020 Awards is part of PEMC’s efforts to recognize market participant compliance through positive reinforcement,” said PEMC President Oscar E. Ala.

The WCO Summit 2020 Awards distinguished market participant commitment to fulfilling their obligations in offering to the market their maximum available capacity as well as their compliance to their real-time schedule instructions. This covered the period 26 June 2019 to 25 June 2020 and is based on WESM generator classification (biomass, coal-fired, geothermal, hydroelectric, natural gas, and oil-based).

The WCO Summit 2020 Awards also recognized efforts to attain high compliance scores of variable RE generators specifically on observing accuracy standards on their projected output covering the 26 December 2018 to 25 December 2019 period as monitored by the Independent Electricity Market of the Philippines (IEMOP). This is based on resource type (wind, solar, and run-of-river).

“PEMC acknowledges that, based on the WESM Rules, it only recognizes generator participant compliance currently and is looking at ways to recognize non-generator market participants as well,” said Ala.

The PEMC is the governing body of the WESM, a centralized venue and platform for the trading of electricity. Consistent with the provisions in the Electric Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) of 2001, PEMC transferred the management of the operations of the WESM to the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) in September 2018.

This move resulted in the current structure with PEMC as the governance arm and owner of the market-related assets with IEMOP managing the daily market operations.

“To ensure that the market is running efficiently and in the spirit of EPIRA’s vision, the PEM Board continuously studies the effectivity of the separation of the governance and the market operations functions and looking at ways to improve the administration of the WESM,” said Aboboto.