P.O. Box 1161, QCCPO, NCR, Philippines 1100
Cell No. : +63 917-812-5546
Email : labankonsyumer@gmail.com
: dimagibavic@gmail.com
: dmagiba@pldtdsl.net
Facebook: Laban Konsyumer Inc.
Website : www.labankonsyumer.com
LKI 59th Press Statement
DECEMBER 9, 2019
MAKE PUBLIC THE MAINTENANCE SCHEDULES OF POWER PLANTS AND PREVENT PRICE SPIKES –LABAN KONSYUMER
After calling for the swift approval of pending power supply agreements that will result to a forty centavo ( Php 0.40 ) per kwh rollback in Meralco ‘s power rate , consumer group Laban Konsyumer Inc. filed a Petition last Friday , December 6,2019 for the Energy Regulatory Commission to make public the 2020 to 2022 maintenance schedule of power plants or the Grid Operating Management Program ( GOMP) .
LKI President Vic Dimagiba alleged that “there are no legal and reasonable rationale why the GOMP is treated as confidential, as maintenance schedules do not appear to be commercially sensitive or proprietary in nature. Their disclosure will help promote transparency and accountability. There are no good reason to keep such critical and essential information away from the eyes and minds of consumers. All these recent yellow and red alerts are alarming and we need to understand the reasons behind these occurrences and thinning power supply situations. There are many provisions in the EPIRA that laid the foundation for transparency as well as ensuring market competition”.
The group pointed out how “the confidentiality of the GOMP raises a realistic possibility that generating plants can “adjust their outages “ schedule for the purpose of manipulating prices in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market and that the consumers’ position has been to mandate public disclosure of plant outage information, which will help prevent anti-competitive behavior amongst the generating firms and plants. It reasoned that there are no express prohibition that the maintenance outages are not shared amongst the generating plants owners and that penalties have been imposed and collected to ensure compliance”.
Dimagiba added that “the public disclosures shall serve the purpose of checks and balance amongst the stakeholders, the consumers and the regulators. The submission of the three year, annual, monthly and weekly and daily Operating Program is required by the Grid Code 6.5 2016 edition and are submitted in a prescribed template to the Grid Management Committee, which has since been defunct, but the data can be posted in the Commission website, on real time basis, meaning for the current 3 year period beginning 2020 to 2022.”
On unplanned outages, the Honorable Commission should make public disclosure of the generating plants report which they are required to submit to the Honorable Commission. The reports should be posted on real time in the Commission website.”
Dimagiba concluded by saying “up to this time, the alleged collusion in the spot market for the current year 2019 had not been reported to the public and that no sanctions had been imposed despite assurances from the ERC as well as the from the spot market operator.