MANILA - Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla is pushing for faster Philippine Electricity Market Corp. results on its investigations regarding the violations of the electricity market's Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) trading rules.

"When PEMC investigates, they usually investigate violations that happened two to three years ago. PEMC's like that... So I told them effective immediately, all investigations will have to be as updated as possible," Petilla told reporters.

He stressed the three year gap discourages generation companies to have discipline, adding it will only result in lawsuits.

The energy secretary instructed PEMC that investigations should be started after a month of electricity trading.

He said PEMC argued that they can't do that due to lack of staff, Petilla answered them that they should hire more poeple.

Meanwhile, Petilla ordered PEMC to implement a cut-off that from Dec. 1, 2013, penalty should be charged as it is.

The energy head noted the maximum penalty, for WESM rules before, was at P3 million.

Petilla mentioned the PEMC findings is different from the ERC investigation on the WESM trading collusion.

"This is just a penalty, because of violation of rules, actually this is not the end," he said.

Three generation companies were fined for violation of WESM trading rules, namely Therma Mobile Inc (TMO), Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) and Panasia Energy Inc. Only TMO publicly mentioned its penalty at P234.9 million.

The firms were charged for not running their power plants -- PSALM’s 140 Megawatt (MW) Casecnan and 650 MW Malaya, Panasia’s 540 MW Limay and TMO's 234 MW four bunker-fired-- on schedule.

He explained PSALM, a government entity, was penalized due to its no response -- after it was asked to explain. It was automatically read by PEMC as guilty, according to Petilla.

The energy secretary suggested to PEMC to use the fund for an information campaign on what WESM is all about, initially in the Visayas island due to the negative pricing that happened there.

He is still studying ways on using the fund, however, he assured that "if we will give back to the people, we will give back to the people".

Petilla has also shared a plan to have a WESM accreditation, in which they cannot trade if they do not have a license. The generation companies have to take an exam first, to get the license.

"People are trading and yet they do not know the aspect of WESM, then they are the first to complain," he said.

However, those companies which have no expertise, can still take the exam through a hired consultant.

PEMC operates and oversees the operations of generation companies at the WESM, which is the electricity-trading area for the Luzon and Visayas grids. *PNA

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