NGCP relaunches bidding for additional reserves

MANILA, Philippines — The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) has re-launched its competitive selection process (CSP) for additional reserves this year to maintain power quality and ensure the safety of the power grid.

The NGCP posted an invitation to bid on its website, calling on grid-connected merchant plants and independent power producers (IPPs) to provide ancillary services (AS).

AS are support services needed to maintain power quality, reliability and security of the grid.

“NGCP needs qualified ancillary services providers who can supply the grid requirements for Regulating Reserve, Contingency Reserve, Dispatchable Reserve, Reactive Power Support and Black Start Service, to commence in 2022 subject to the approval of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) of Ancillary Services Procurement Agreements (ASPA),” it said.

NGCP, through its third-party bids and awards committee (TPBAC), will receive expressions of interest until May 12.

It has set a pre-bid conference on May 23 and the deadline for bids on June 14 for Luzon, June 15 for Visayas, and June 16 for Mindanao.

The grid operator hopes to award five-year AS firm contracts for the Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao grids from July 4 to 8.

The NGCP previously set the CSP in February and awarding of contracts on March 1, but deferred the process after prospective bidders raised concerns. It said the deferment was also “consistent with the policy of promoting competition in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner.”

The AS policy of the DOE directs NGCP to procure 100 percent firm power reserves, as well as engage in the forward contracting of reserve requirements to ensure grid reliability and allow the entry of additional capacities.

Under the CSP, bidders should have a power plant that is directly connected to an NGCP-owned facility with a dedicated connection.

The CSP is also open to embedded generators, with expressed consent from host distribution utility (DU) that it can dispatch anytime when required for AS provision.

The NGCP requires regulating reserve (RR) or four percent of the hourly system demand and any such qualified regulating reserve capacity required to mitigate any frequency variability in the grid; contingency reserve, or the most heavily loaded generating unit on-line and its scheduled reserve; dispatchable reserve, or the second most heavily loaded generating unit on- line and its scheduled reserve; reactive power support, which dependent on system voltage condition; and black start service, or a one black start plant per restoration highway.

“Offer shall be identified per unit/per sector and presented in an hourly profile to already consider the scheduled outage hours of the plant. There will be no more allocation for outage hours allowance,” it said.

The grid operator has set the maximum AS rate at P2.25 per kilowatt (kW) per scheduled hour for regulating reserve, P1.50 per kW per scheduled hour for contingency reserve, P0.85 per kW per scheduled hour for dispatchable reserve, P4.00 per kilovolt ampere reactive per hour, per occurrence for reactive power support, and incidental energy payment only per occurrence for black start service.