The Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) expects spot market power rates in May 2025 to remain around April’s level of P4 to P5 per kilowatt-hour on sufficient power supply.
IEMOP vice president for trading operations Isidro Cacho said April’s price trend was “around P4 something, not yet at P5.”
“For May, given the ample margin that we are seeing in the market, we see the same level of pricing at P4 to P5,” he said.
Cacho expressed hope that no unplanned outages would affect this projection. “But given the plan, the maintenance [of power plants] has already been planned, we see stable prices for the next six months,” he said.
“Hopefully, we maintain that level of supply margin all throughout the year, not only in May or June, but hopefully it will be bigger as we go throughout the year. There are many more RE coming in that will boost the supply,” Cacho said.
He said IEMOP forecasts a “more stable market, more ample supply, and generally stable prices” after the election season.
IEMOP reported that for the April 2025 billing period, the country’s overall power supply increased to 21,345 megawatts, an 8.8-percent rise from March.
With supply exceeding demand, the supply margin widened to 4,585 MW, compared to 3,957 MW in March, leading to lower market prices.
Meanwhile, Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) indicated potential decreases in generation and transmission charges for May.
“Initial data shows WESM prices trended lower in the April supply month as power plants that went on outage started to resume operations, boosting capacity in the market,” said Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga.
“We also see a possibility of lower transmission charges due to the decline in reserve market prices as well as the completion of the P0.11 per kWh collection of the February-March 2024 reserve market charges,” he said.
