ILP rules amended to include more participants

MANILA, Philippines – The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has approved changes to the rules governing the Interruptible Load Program (ILP), a government initiated program meant to address the power shortage anticipated during summer.

ERC Executive Director Francis Juan said the commission approved the inclusion of non-captive “contestable customers and also directly-connected customers, eco zones, and other distribution utilities (DUs).”

“If the ILP coverage was not expanded, Meralco (Manila Electric Company) could only call on its captive customers to join the ILP,” added Juan. ILP also only used to cover contestable DU customers.

ILP, a voluntary scheme, works by calling on business customers to run their own generator sets, if needed, instead of drawing power from the grid.

Amendments

In a press briefing Wednesday, March 18, deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said the Palace recognizes the Department of Energy’s (DOE) efforts to get stakeholders on board to be able to conserve energy going into the summer months.

It still has to verify, however, the status of granting special powers to President Benigno Aquino III to help address the looming power shortage. Valte also said that both the House and the Senate still have to reconcile implementing rules over ILP.

The House version wants to provide for a full-government subsidy of ILP costs via the Malampaya funds but the Senate version wants this to be a pass-through charge.

The amended rules were approved amid Congress’ failure to pass legislation that would determine who should foot the bill for the compensation of ILP participants.

The amended rules shall apply to all DUs and their respective participating captive customers within their franchise area, to all DUs that entered into a tripartite ILP agreement with a retail electricity supplier and its participating contestable customers, and the NGCP that entered into an ILP agreement with a participating directly-connected customer, the ERC said.

With the amendments, ILP can now include contestable customers or those with a monthly average peak demand of at least 1 megawatt (MW). Contestable consumers are those who switched to buying electricity from an electricity retailer or from the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM), instead of remaining as non-contestable consumers, buying electricity at the regulated tariff.

The amended ILP rules included those that are directly connected with the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

The NGCP shall pay the participating customer an amount representing the incremental cost incurred due to full or partial de-loading.

The ERC also wants the NGCP to submit a monthly report on its ILP implementation, containing details of its calculations of the de-loading compensation.

“To make the ILP more responsive in mitigating system emergencies, the ERC expanded its coverage and introduced other changes to its ILP rules to include and attract more participants to join. More participants mean additional reductions in overall demand,” Juan said in a text message.

Latest count

As of latest count, Meralco has registered 80 customers from the private sector that will contribute 393.36 MW of capacity, bringing to 667.29 MW the committed interruptible load (CIL) for the summer. It likewise signed up 1.7MW of CIL from the government sector.

Contestable customer participants or those with a monthly average peak demand of at least 1MW have signed up a total of 264.73MW of interruptible load. Of this, 110.44 MW will come from different retail electricity suppliers (RES) and 154.29 MW from MPower, the retail electricity supplier unit of Meralco.

“A lot of the major establishments have already implemented the recommendations of the DOE in order to make sure that supply is maintained, as well as the reserves,” Valte said. – Rappler.com