Philippine wholesale electricity prices (WESM)
Electricity in the Philippines is traded before it is billed. On the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, generators are paid a price that clears every five minutes for each grid region, and that price is the single most volatile input in the country's energy costs. This page tracks it for Luzon, the Visayas, Mindanao and the system as a whole, using data published by the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines.
The figures on this page are what generators are paid on the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, quoted in pesos per megawatt-hour (₱/MWh). A household bill is quoted in pesos per kilowatt-hour (₱/kWh) and is a completely different number: it bundles generation, transmission, distribution, system loss, metering, subsidies and taxes, most of which have nothing to do with the spot market. A ₱4,000/MWh spot price is ₱4.00 per kWh of wholesale energy alone — it is not a ₱4.00 electricity rate, and no consumer is billed at it.
Latest wholesale spot price by grid
| Grid region | Latest day (₱/MWh) | Latest day (₱/kWh) | vs previous day | Recent average (₱/MWh) | Trading day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luzon CLUZ | ₱4,847.94 | ₱4.8479 | -2.3% | ₱7,597.99 | 25 July 2026 |
| Visayas CVIS | ₱8,663.10 | ₱8.6631 | +5.2% | ₱12,895.12 | 25 July 2026 |
| Mindanao CMIN | ₱8,779.30 | ₱8.7793 | +3.0% | ₱11,640.17 | 25 July 2026 |
| System-wide SYSTEM | ₱6,001.85 | ₱6.0018 | +1.2% | ₱8,927.01 | 25 July 2026 |
By grid region
How the spot market works
The Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) is where electricity is bought and sold in the Philippines before it reaches a distribution utility or an electric cooperative. Generators offer output, demand is met from the cheapest available offers, and a price is cleared for every five-minute dispatch interval. The market is operated by the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP), which publishes the resulting prices.
Samirla stores one row per grid region per trading day: the average price across that day's intervals, the cheapest and dearest single interval, and how many intervals were published. Prices are held in pesos per megawatt-hour, the unit IEMOP publishes, with the per-kilowatt-hour equivalent stored alongside so it lines up with retail series. No figure on these pages is modelled, smoothed or forecast.
The grid regions are IEMOP's own: CLUZ for Luzon, CVIS for the Visayas, CMIN for Mindanao, and SYSTEM for the market-level figure across the interconnected grid.
Two timing points matter when reading any WESM figure. Settlement runs roughly three to four weeks behind the trading day, and IEMOP's published window is a rolling period of about two months, so the newest trading day held here is normally several weeks old and the archive builds up over time rather than reaching back indefinitely. Every price on this site is labelled with the trading day it belongs to for that reason.
How wholesale prices reach a bill
Spot prices are not a bill, but they are not disconnected from one either. The generation charge on a Philippine electricity bill is a pass-through: the distribution utility recovers what it paid for energy, part of which is bought on the spot market and part under bilateral supply contracts at agreed prices. A month of high spot prices therefore tends to show up later, partially and diluted, in the generation component of bills — how much depends on how much of that utility's supply was contracted rather than bought on the spot market, and on regulatory timing.
That is why the two series are worth watching together but never worth confusing. Spot prices move daily and can swing violently; retail rates move monthly and are far smoother. Samirla also tracks the Meralco residential effective rate as a separate monthly series, and measures how strongly retail electricity moves with commodity prices on its electricity correlation page.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the price I pay for electricity at home?
No. This is the wholesale spot price paid to generators on the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, quoted in pesos per megawatt-hour. Your bill is a retail rate in pesos per kilowatt-hour, and it bundles generation, transmission, distribution, system loss, metering charges, subsidies and taxes. The two figures are on different scales and cover different things, so a wholesale price should never be read as a household rate.
What is WESM?
The Wholesale Electricity Spot Market is the Philippine market where generators sell electricity and distribution utilities and other buyers purchase it. Offers are stacked cheapest first to meet demand and a price clears for each five-minute dispatch interval. It is operated by the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP), which publishes the prices reproduced here.
Why are prices shown per megawatt-hour?
Because that is the unit IEMOP publishes and the unit the market trades in. One megawatt-hour is a thousand kilowatt-hours, so a ₱5,000/MWh spot price is ₱5.00 per kWh of wholesale energy. The per-kilowatt-hour equivalent is stored and shown alongside for comparison, but it is still a wholesale energy price and still not a retail rate.
Why do the prices swing so much from day to day?
Spot prices reflect what it costs to meet demand at a given moment. When plants go on outage, when demand peaks in hot weather, or when transmission is constrained, expensive capacity has to run and the clearing price rises sharply. When demand is low and cheap capacity is plentiful, prices fall. Individual intervals can be very high or very low relative to the day's average, which is why the lowest and highest interval of each day are shown next to it.
Do wholesale prices affect my bill at all?
Indirectly and partially. The generation charge on a Philippine bill is a pass-through of what the distribution utility paid for energy, and only part of that supply is bought on the spot market — the rest is contracted bilaterally at agreed prices. A period of high spot prices tends to show up later and diluted in the generation component, filtered through the utility's supply mix and regulatory timing. It is a driver, not a bill.
Why is the most recent trading day several weeks ago?
WESM settlement runs roughly three to four weeks behind the trading day, and IEMOP publishes on a rolling window of about two months. That lag is a property of the market, not of this site. Every figure here is labelled with the trading day it belongs to, and none of them is presented as a live or current price.
What do CLUZ, CVIS and CMIN mean?
They are IEMOP's codes for the grid regions: CLUZ is Luzon, CVIS is the Visayas, CMIN is Mindanao, and SYSTEM is the market-level figure across the interconnected grid. Each has its own price because generation capacity and transmission constraints differ between the grids.
Is this data free to use?
These pages are free and need no account. Full daily history, exports, cross-series comparison against fuel, inflation and commodity prices, and API access are part of the Samirla dashboard, which starts with a 14-day free trial.