REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION PASIG CITY
IN THE MATTER OF THE PETITION FOR PUBLIC DISCLOSURE OF THE GRID OPERATING AND MAINTAINANCE PROGRAM (GOMP) OF POWER PLANTS
ERC CASE NO.
ATTY. VICTORIO MARIO A.
DIMAGIBA, IN HIS PERSONAL CAPACITY AND AS PRESIDENT OF LABAN KONSYUMER INC.
Petitioners,
NATIONAL GRID CORPORATION OF THE PHILIPPINES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Post PHILIPPINE ELECTRICITY Lett MARKET CORPORATION PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENT POWER PRODUCERS ASSOCIATION
All Nominal Parties .
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Petitioners, thru the undersigned counsel, respectfully moves as follows, to wit:
1. That Petitioner Dimagiba is a Filipino, with TIN No 120-134-466, of legal age, married and a resident of No. 5 Elgin Street, Brgy. Fairview, Quezon City, 1118 where he may be served with pleadings, appearances, motions, notices, orders, resolutions, the judgment, and other Commission processes.
2. That Petitioner Dimagiba is a consumer protection advocate, a member of the Philippine Bar since 1973 and a member of the New York State Bar since 1986. He worked for 19 years as a lawyer in Petron Corporation until 1994, then as a lavvryer and later as Vice President and General Manager in the PNOC Petrochemical Development Corporation until 2003 and was appointed to the Department of Trade and Industry as Director of the Bureau of Trade
Regulation and Consumer Protection in 2005. He later served as Undersecretary for the Consumer Protection Group until the end of his term on July 31, 2016.
3. That Petitioner Laban Konsyumer Inc., or Laban Konsyumer, is a non-stock and non-profit corporation duly organized and existing under the laws of the Philippines that seeks to help, protect, and empower consumers on their rights and responsibilities. Laban Konsyumer Inc. may be served with pleadings, appearances, motions, notices, orders, resolutions, the judgment, and other Court processes through counsel at the address indicated below.
4. That Petitioner Laban Konsyumer is an accredited consumer organization of the Department and Trade and Industry, under Certificate of Recognition CPAB No. C-0001, and a full-term member of the Consumers International under Membership Number F -3058, an association of more than 250 consumer associations from 120 countries. Laban Konsyumer has 100 registered members nationwide as recorded in the organization’s Membership Book. Its primary mandate is advocacy on consumer rights and responsibilities as well as advocacy on reasonable and fair prices of basic necessities and prime commodities. It has power to sue under its corporate charter.
5. That the following corporations and entities are impleaded on an ad cautelam basis as nominal parties and for purposes of notification with the addresses where they may be served with summons and processes of the Honorable Commission, namely:
A. National Grid Corporation of the Philippines. Diliman, Quezon City.
B. Philippine Electricity Market Corporation. 18th/F, Robinsons Equitable Tower, ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City 1600.
C. Philippine Inde endent Power Producers Association, Inc. Unit 2408, 24t IF, Prestige Tower, F. Ortigas Jr. Road (formerly Emerald Avenue ), Ortigas Center, Pasig City 1605.
D. Department of Energy, Rizal Drive, BGC, Taguig City.
6. That the Petition is seeking the authority of the Honorable Commission to make public the current 3-year schedule, i.e., 2020 to 2022, of the Grid Operating Management Program, or GOMP, and all future GOMP, which are currently made available to our personal knowledge only to the power plants, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) for reasons of CONFIDENTIALITY and the legal basis thereof is not explicitly provided in Republic Act No. 9136 or the Electric Power Industry Reform Act.
7. That there is no reasonable rationale for why the GOMP is treated as confidential, as maintenance schedules do not appear to be commercially sensitive or proprietary in nature. If anything, their disclosure will help promote transparency and accountability.
8. That the availability or non-availability of power generation units, such as for maintenance, directly affects power prices, particularly, in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market. For example, according to the “Monthly Summary and Significant Variations Report” for June 2019 of the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) I :
“Prices for the month of June 2019 are generally higher than the previous month with instances of price spikes and sustained high prices during the early days of the billing month and the last few days of the billing month. Occurrences of high prices can be mainly attributed to the increase in the demand and major plant outages leading to thin supply margin.” (emphasis added)
9. That 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 anticompetitive behavior among the generating plants.
10. That the public disclosures shall serve the purpose of checks and balance amongst the stakeholders, the consumers and the regulators.
11. That the submission of the three year, annual, monthly and weekly and daily Operating Program is required by the Grid Code 6.5 2016 edition 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.
12. 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.
13.0n unplanned outages, the Honorable Commission should make public disclosure of the generating plants report which they are required to submit to the Honorable Commission in accordance with ERC Resolution No. 21, Series of 2016, entitled, “The Revised Rules and Procedures to Govern the Monitoring of Reliability Performance of Generating Units and Transmission System”. More specifically, Article IV, Section 1 of the Resolution requires that:
“If the Generating Unit is in the Unavailable and/or Derating State, the Generation Company must submit in an event report within forty eight (48) hours from the occurrence of the event. Thereafter, the Generation Company shall submit a weekly summary report (Monday to Sunday) on the circumstances of the event on the
Tuesday following the occurrence of the event and every following Tuesday thereafter. Xxx”
The said report, along with reports for other months, are available for download at http://www.iemop.ph/inner.php/downloads/monthly_summary_and_significant_variations report.
The reports should be posted on real time in the Commission website.
14. 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.
15. There are many provisions in the EPIRA that laid the foundation for transparency as well as ensuring market competition. The Honorable Commission should strike out from the Grid Code the section on Confidentiality written in Section 1.4 of the Grid Code, as contrary to the explicit provisions of the EPIRA.
A. Section 2 (c )
B. Section 2 (f)
C. Section 2 (j)
D. Section mm
E. Section nn F. Section rr
A to F, all in the Declaration of Policy, RA 9136
G. Section 6 on Generation Sector is a business affected with public interest, shall be competitive and open.
H. Section 41 on Promotion of Consumer interest
I. Section 43 on Functions of the ERC, among others shall exert efforts to minimize price shocks in order to protect the consumers
J. Section 75 on Statutory Construction on the preservation of competition and people empowerment.
K. Section 30 on the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market
16.1n sum, there are many advantages than negatives in support of the Petition. The Buyers of the power and the consumers should be given access to information that serve as checks and balance in ensuring market competition. The above Petition gains strength with the Freedom of Information Executive Order and the Philippine Competition Act.
WHERFORE, premises considered, we respectfully submit the Petition for the consideration and resolution of the Honorable Commission.
December 4, 2019, Quezon City for Pasig City.
MARIO
Counsel
No. 5, Elgin Street, Brgy. Fairview, Quezon City, 1 118 PTR No. 7446842, Jan. 11, 2019
IBP No. AR 4719174, Jan. 11, 2019
MCLE Vl- 0024985, valid till April 14, 2022 Email: labankonsyumer@gmail.com dmagiba@pldtdsl.net
cc: ( by registered mail )
NGCP DOE
PEMC PIPPA