Mindanao joins the wholesale electricity spot market

The wholesale electricity spot market started commercial operations in Mindanao on 26 January 2023. Luzon had traded since 2006 and the Visayas since 2010; Mindanao, with no interconnection to either, had run on bilateral contracts and a brief interim market in 2013. From this date the island's generators and utilities trade surplus and shortfall at a price set every five minutes.

Compiled in September 2026 from the releases of the time, with the revisions the agencies have published since. Nothing here is a forecast.

What Mindanao's supply looks like

For decades the island ran on the Agus and Pulangi hydro cascades, with shortages in every dry year. From 2016 a run of coal plants came on line and turned shortage into surplus. By 2023 Mindanao had more capacity than demand, which is the condition in which a spot market is cheap, and the reason its early prices were the lowest of the three grids.

What a market changes for a plant

A price that is published every five minutes tells a site what its own generation is worth at any hour, and it gives a generator with surplus somewhere to sell it without a contract. An industrial plant with a residue-fired boiler and a turbine can export at the spot price when its own load is low, and a large user can, through a retail supplier, buy at it. Before this date, neither was available in Mindanao.

The interconnection

The submarine link between Mindanao and the Visayas was under construction as the market opened and was energised the following year. Once it was, the three grids became one market in practice, and Mindanao's surplus began to find its way north. The island's advantage as a location for a plant, cheap firm power, narrowed as its surplus was sold.

Why it matters for agro-industry

Mindanao is where much of the country's residue is: coconut, banana, pineapple, palm and sugar. A plant that turns those into power now has a market to sell into and a price to plan against. That is the missing piece the island lacked when the earlier feasibility studies were written.

We work with developers and technology providers on the Philippine execution side: permits, grid, fuel and construction. Tell us about the project. The figures behind each quarter are in the quarterly market brief.