The Visayas grid was again placed on yellow alert as of 9:20 a.m. yesterday as 24 power plant units were on either forced outage or de-rated, displacing 613.3 megawatts (MW) in capacity.
Yellow alert was raised in the Visayas Grid yesterday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. as 19 power plant units and five more with de-rated capacities.
Yellow alerts are issued when the level of power reserve in the grid is low and power interruptions are not yet imminent.
According to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the alerts were raised as available capacity in the Visayas Grid was only 2,926 MW against a peak demand of 2,596 MW.
Meanwhile, the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said additional baseload supply would resolve the lack of available power reserves.
Baseload power plants are those that can supply energy 24×7 without depending on weather patterns and intermittent fuel sources.
Lawrence Fernandez, Meralco vice president and head of utility economics department, in a Congressional hearing on Tuesday said the Department of Energy may also consider allowing NGCP to contract Greenfield capacity for ancillary services as recent contracts have only allowed for existing capacities.
Meralco said to encourage investments in power plants, capital expenditure approvals for both distribution utilities as well as for NGCP must be expedited to ensure the connection of generating plants and make power supply available on time.
In a related development, Sen. Francis Escudero said the power rate increase all point to the failure of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) and the DOE to perform their respective mandates.
“There is nothing in the Energy Plan nor Medium-Term Plan nor their proposed amendments to EPIRA (Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001) does it say that they will strive to make power rates lower,” Escudero said in a Viber message to the media.
He said a lot of factors contributed to higher power rates, including the slow processing of applications for new capacity, approval of off-take agreements, absence of lack of legal and market incentives for new capacity, low supply plus high demand which leads to increase prices.
He said the agencies focused on variable renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and liquefied natural gas which is 100 to 200 percent more expensive than coal.
He said another factor which led to higher power rate is the absence or lack of an advanced regulatory regime for power and experts/expertise in government to supervise and regulate all the players.
Senate deputy minority leader Risa Hontiveros hit the DOE, ERC, and the NGCP for lack of foresight and competence to address the power supply shortage nationwide.
She recommended that the DOE readopt a “proven industry-standard method” that had been in use before the EPIRA was enacted.
She asked the DOE to tap experts who could help re-implement
The loss of load probability (LOLP), a measure of the reliability performance of the power supply system that forecasts the number of days when a brownout could occur in a year.
“LOLP has a distinct advantage when it comes to forecasting power supply availability. Right now the agency is computing with a fixed 25 percent reserve, especially during this summer season,” Hontiveros said. – Jed Macapagal and Raymond Africa
