MANILA, Philippines - With growing demand and capacity additions, the ceiling for the installed capacity that can be owned by a power generator has been adjusted upwards for Luzon and Visayas grids; but it has been downscaled in the case of the Mindanao grid.
In the 30-percent grid market share limitation set for power generation companies, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has prescribed the cap for Luzon grid at 3,350.242 megawatts (MW) for this year from 3,251.703MW previously.
The market cap for Visayas has been adjusted higher to 615.586MW from last year's 586.432 MW, chiefly due to capacity additions from the commercial operations of new power projects in the area.
It is a reverse scenario in Mindanao's case though because the capacity limitation was pulled lower to 526.974 megawatts from the year-ago level of 539.925 megawatts.
The installed generating capacity references for the three grids are as follows: 11,167.476MW for Luzon; 2,051.956MW for Visayas; and 1,756.583MW for Mindanao.
On the mandated 25-percent limit on national installed capacity, the market cap was set notches higher to 3,744.003MW from last year's 3,648.384MW. The reference installed capacity has been at 14,976.015MW.
The prescribed installed generating capacity per grid and on a national scale, the ERC has emphasized, "shall be strictly enforced and implemented until the next adjustment" which may be put in force on or before March 15, 2012.
If gleaned from the previous year's prescribed capacity limits, the regulator declared that "no generation company nor any other entity has violated the market share limitations."
The imposition of capacity ceilings was instituted Section 45 (a) of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act and Section 4(a) Rule 11 of its implementing rules and regulations to prevent dominance of any single generator in the deregulated power industry.
Currently, the biggest capacity owners in the generation segment of the business are San Miguel conglomerate; First Gen of the Lopezes and Aboitiz Power group.
It is anticipated that as demand grows and new power projects come on stream, the capacity ceilings may also climb higher - especially for the periods from 2013 to 2015.
