Philippine Energy Policy Wiki

MOC: Market Operations

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operative
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high

Circulars spanning 2010 to 2024, the longest run in the folder, all implementing EPIRA (Digest: RA 9136 — Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 (EPIRA) ) §30–31 and §37. They divide into four groups that are easy to confuse: the WESM’s own commencement milestones, the reserve and ancillary services layer that keeps the grid stable, the dispatch priority that renewables enjoy inside the market, and the retail competition regime that lets an end-user leave its distribution utility. Retail competition is filed here rather than in its own section because it is implemented inside the WESM — see the general policies circular below, which builds the contestable market on the market’s own registration and settlement machinery.

Belongs here: a circular about trading, dispatch, reserves, or retail contestability in the wholesale market. The competitive procurement a captive distribution utility must run is a different regime and belongs in MOC: Competitive Selection Process .

WESM commencement and market design

  • Digest: DC2006-06-0009 — Default Wholesale Suppliers (NPC/PSALM) at WESM Launch — Default wholesale suppliers at the Luzon launch. Designates NPC and PSALM to supply the electricity imbalances of customers not yet able to trade in the spot market, issued four days before WESM Luzon began commercial operations on 26 June 2006. Interim by construction: §3 caps the designation at one year from the start of commercial operations and §4 calls it a transition measure, so it lapsed on 26 June 2007 by its own terms. Start here for how imbalance supply was covered at market opening. (2006)
  • Digest: DC2010-05-0006: Terminating the Default Wholesale Supplier Arrangement for WESM and Declaring a Disconnection Policy — Terminating the default wholesale supplier arrangement. Ends the arrangement under which NPC and PSALM absorbed WESM imbalances, made unviable by privatization, and replaces it with a hard registration duty: every entity must register as a WESM member within 90 days or be disconnected from the grid, with a settlement or restructuring path for DUs carrying NPC/PSALM arrearages. Start here for the origin of mandatory WESM membership. (2010)
  • Digest: DC2021-06-0015 — Enhanced WESM Design commercial operation. Declares the enhanced design live across all three grids from 26 June 2021, with a three-month relaxation of dispatch conformance standards, central scheduling for Mindanao on non-binding prices until late July, and a further relaxation of prudential requirements there. Permits a host DU to act as metering service provider for embedded generators pending permanent ERC rules. Start here for the enhanced design’s start date and its transition reliefs (Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) ). (2021)
  • Digest: DC2022-12-0039 — WESM Mindanao commercial operation date. Sets 26 January 2023 as the Mindanao COD, with a 15 January registration deadline, staged relief on prudential requirements and dispatch conformance for the first three billing months, and disconnection powers for non-compliance. Keeps Mindanao settlement separate from Luzon–Visayas until the Mindanao–Visayas interconnection energizes, allocates Agus 1 and 2 output exclusively to two cooperatives for one year, and terminates FIT units’ renewable energy supply agreements on COD. Start here for how Mindanao entered the spot market (Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Project (MVIP) ). (2022)
  • Digest: DC2013-01-0001: Directing PEMC to Develop and Implement an Interim Mindanao Electricity Market (IMEM) — Interim Mindanao Electricity Market. Directs PEMC to build the IMEM, the day-ahead market that preceded WESM in Mindanao: mandatory participation, real-time imbalance correction on a merit order table, uniform market clearing price, and costs allocated among participants. Records that PSALM and NPC then controlled about 74% of Mindanao generating capacity, which is the reason the interim design existed. Start here for pre-WESM Mindanao (Interim Mindanao Electricity Market (IMEM) ). (2013)

Reserves and ancillary services

  • Digest: DC2010-06-0007 — Preparations for WESM Ancillary Services Trading — Preparations for ancillary services trading in the WESM. The earliest step toward trading reserves in the spot market: directs PEMC and the system operator to complete the readiness work — rules, systems, and participant registration — ahead of ancillary services commencing as a traded product, nearly a decade before the general framework below and thirteen years before the reserve market went live. Start here for where AS trading in the WESM started. (2010)
  • Digest: DC2019-12-0018: General Framework Governing the Provision and Utilization of Ancillary Services — General framework for ancillary services. The base document: nine guiding principles, and the classification that everything downstream uses — regulating reserve at 4% of demand, contingency reserve sized on the largest unit, dispatchable reserve on the second largest, reactive power support to a 5% voltage tolerance, and black start capability. Sets mandatory testing thresholds at 10 MW in Luzon and 5 MW elsewhere, and the procurement rule: firm contracts only before the reserve market opens, then a 50/50 split between contracts and market. Start here for what an ancillary service is and how it is procured (Ancillary Services (AS) ). (2019)
    • Lineage: amended by Digest: DC2021-10-0031 (AS-CSP Policy, October 2021) (2021 — the AS-CSP policy, requiring the system operator to procure ancillary services contracts of up to five years by competitive selection, on an annual procurement plan filed by 31 March with ten-year projections, a five-member TPBAC, a 90-day end-to-end process, ERC approval within 15 working days, and direct negotiation only after two failed attempts) and by Digest: DC2021-03-0009 , which the entry below replaced.
  • Digest: DC2023-09-0026 (Reserve Market Commercial Operations) — Reserve market commercial operations. Declares the co-optimized energy and reserve market live: a final preparations stage of non-binding live dispatch and end-to-end testing through 25 December 2023, then financially binding co-optimized schedules and prices from 26 December, with all trading participants bound by reserve offer capacity compliance and reserve conformance standards enforced by the WESM governance arm. Start here for the reserve market’s status and obligations (Reserve Market and Electricity Derivatives (WESM) ). (2023)
    • Lineage: supersedes Digest: DC2021-03-0009 (2021 — the reserve market’s general framework, which supplemented the ancillary services framework with the co-optimized market design: five-minute dispatch through the market dispatch optimization model, the single-buyer structure with the system operator procuring through both agreements and the market, the three reserve categories, and the settlement chain from market operator to system operator to providers).

Dispatch priority

  • Digest: DC2019-02-0003: Providing for the Framework Governing the Operations of Embedded Generators — Embedded generator framework. Defines the embedded generator — a unit connected to the grid indirectly, through a distribution system — and sets national WESM mandatory-registration thresholds by grid (10 MW Luzon, 5 MW Visayas and Mindanao on Pmax), with carve-outs for sub-threshold units that contract or inject, and for all FIT-eligible RE plants, replacing a single Mindanao-only threshold set two years earlier. Covers ERC certificate-of-compliance licensing, central dispatch compliance routed through the host DU, ancillary service eligibility, and metering, with continuing duties on the DU, market operator, system operator and network provider. Start here for what counts as an embedded generator and what it owes (Embedded Generators (EG) ). (2019)
  • Digest: DC2015-03-0001 (Must Dispatch and Priority Dispatch Framework) — Must dispatch and priority dispatch framework. Establishes the dispatch preference renewables hold in the WESM under RA 9513 §20 and RA 9136 §37: must dispatch for intermittent plants (wind, solar, run-of-river hydro, ocean) whether under FIT or not, priority dispatch for FIT biomass, both conditional on DOE certification and an ERC certificate of compliance. Fixes the five-level dispatch hierarchy and the constrained-corridor sharing rule, and assigns NGCP the penetration limit, the aggregated RE forecast, and redispatch authority for grid security. Start here for Preferential Dispatch (RE in WESM) and its mechanics. (2015)
    • Lineage: amended by Digest: DC2022-10-0031 (2022 — extends preferential dispatch from FIT biomass to all existing and new RE units, moving geothermal and impounding hydro into priority dispatch and letting the DOE add future emerging technologies).

Retail competition and open access

Up: MOC: Regulations