Eleven companies have forwarded interest to join the Visayas Supply Auction Augmentation (VSAA) program being instituted to ease power supply shortages engulfing various areas in the grid.

These are the SPC Island Power Corporation in Panay; Central Azucarera de Sa Antonio; East Asia Utilities Corporation; Cebu Private Power Corporation; Aklan Electric Cooperative; Cebu Electric Cooperative II; Negros Oriental Electric Cooperative II; Antique Electric Cooperative; Balamban Enerzoine Corporation; Iloilo Electric Cooperative II and Mactan Enerzone Corporation.

The interested parties reportedly manifested their interest to join VSAA via the Philippine Electricity Market Corporation (PEMC), the program implementer which is also pursuing the eventual commercial operations of a Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) in the Visayas.

Based on data provided by PEMC, the interested participants in the VSAA program will likely add 57.28 megawatts of load into the grid. The VSAA mechanism, as approved previously by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) is considered an innovative approach “to find immediate solution to the Visayas power supply situation.”

The regulator said it has given nod to the program, but it first ensured that “the pricing would not pose an onerous burden on the end-consumers”; and that the policy complies with the relevant provisions of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act.

The VSAA is considered a pre-cursor program to the proposed Visayas WESM. The manner in which supply would be offered to end-users in the grid would be an auction via the spot market.

It has been observed that many areas in the Visayas suffer from supply deficiency due to array of factors – like power generators operating below rated capacity.

“Factors like the natural de-rating and unit availability affect the level of dependable capacity of the Visayas generators,” petition filings at the ERC have indicated.

The other factor seen affecting real-time level of supply deficiency is the forced outage of generators, which in turn, results in decreased generating capacity for the grid.

As far as Cebu is concerned, the analysis provided by system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) is that, it will not suffer supply deficiency this 2009, but it will not be spared still from manual load dropping. “Plant outages, either planned or unplanned, have an impact on the CNP supply level,” the system operator noted.