MANILA, Philippines - The Energy Regulatory Commission has lowered the maximum price power producers can sell electricity at in the spot market to avert the kinds of spikes the Supreme Court has issued a TRO on. From P62 per kilowatt hour, power suppliers were ordered to sell power at a maximum of just P32 per kwh at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM). The Power Producers Association said this won't have much, if any, short-term effect, but this may raise risk for power outages in the future. "Other than the price itself, there is no real effect because people are going to supply Meralco no matter what, given the decision of the Philippine Electric Market a few days ago," Miguel Aboitiz, Philippine Independent Power Producers Association president and head of power marketing and trading at Aboitiz Power, told ANC’s “Business Nightly” on Monday. But the biggest issue right now for power producers is if they have enough cash to pay for fuel to run their plants, given that Meralco is temporarily unable to collect the higher generation charge and related pass-on charges from consumers for 60 days. However, Meralco faces some P9 billion in dues to energy suppliers this month. "The biggest issue right now that's facing us is if a lot of the peaking plants are not paid, then they might not have enough cash to pay for the fuel. And if fuel suppliers refuse to deliver fuel to them in the next few weeks, if they lack the cash to pay for it, then those plants would not be able to generate power until they have cash to pay for their fuel," Aboitiz said. "The worry is on the supply side because you have 800MW coming from diesel plants and if they cannot get replacement fuel then those plants won't be able to deliver until somehow they are able to get fuel," he added. Because of this, Aboitiz warned that some peaking plants may not be able to run at full capacity. "If you're a critical peaking plant, fuel is 90% of your cost., if you're only paid 60% of what is owed to you, you won't be able to buy fuel. Those power plants will be in a difficult situation. Other plants, the baseload plants, the coal plants, are the less difficult situation. It's a matter of timing, borrowing money when they need it," he said. "If this is not resolved in the next two to three months, then this would be a problem. Coal plants have 30 days of supply, peaking plants have 4-5 days of fuel supply, if they are unable to buy fuel, they would not be able to run at full capacity," he said. Also, PIPPA said the reduction could discourage investors from repairing, upgrading, or building so-called peak plants, which aren't on all the time but take care of occasional and seasonal spikes in energy demand. “Peaking power plants run infrequently and they usually have few or no contracts at all, so they very much depend on providing power during extreme shortages and if these plants have a ceiling on the price of which they can offer power, obviously it doesn’t encourage people from investing in new peaking plants,” he said. He added that the if there are fewer peak power plants operating, it may raise the risk of power outages when mixed with other factors. "Peak power plants themselves or the lack thereof doesn't really hurt the market or give us a problem, it’s really the total number of power plants that there are versus the demand. Normally, you want a market that has supply that is at least 20 or 30 percent above demand, anything below that then you run the risk of having shortages when you have plants that have forced outages or planned outages,” he said.