Semirara unit seeks to expand customer base

A unit of Semirara Mining and Power Corp. is looking to expand its client base under the retail competition and open access (RCOA) regime after the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) granted the company a license to operate as a retail electricity supplier (RES) in November 2016.

Sem-Calaca RES Corp. has been aggressively marketing its power supply to contestable customers that are qualified to buy from RES suppliers under existing ERC regulations.

Sem-Calaca will obtain its energy requirements from Semirara Mining’s power generation assets Sem-Calaca Power Corporation (SCPC) and Southwest Luzon Power Generation Corporation (SLPGC), which have a total combined capacity of 900 megawatts (MW).

Data from the Competitive Retail Electricity Market (CREM) show that as of June 2017, Luzon has 1,377 contestable customers while Visayas has 184 contestable customers with a total demand of about 3,830MW.

The same data showed that 713 of these contestable customers–with a total demand of some 1,780MW—are still obtaining their electricity from their distribution utilities (DUs).

The ERC previously set a February 26 deadline for these contestable customers with an average monthly peak demand of at least 1MW, to obtain their power supply from a licensed RES.

However, the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the said ERC policy and lowered the threshold to 750 kilowatts (kW).

But the voluntary switching for the 1-MW customers remains in place since they are not covered by the TRO.

A subsidiary of DMCI Holdings, Inc., Semirara Mining is the sole power producer in the country that owns and mines its own fuel source, which is coal.

Source: The Manila Times