ILOILO Rep. Lorenz Defensor yesterday took the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) to task for the repeated power outages in Western Visayas, saying it is unbelievable that the government agencies that are supposed to look after the public’s welfare in the power industry still have not resolved the issue.
The lawmaker expressed his exasperation during the hearing of the House Committee on Energy on the massive blackout in Panay Island last January 2 to 5.
Aside from probing the cause of the island-blackout and who should be blamed for the power outage, the House hearing is also aimed at reviewing the China-backed franchise of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), which is primarily blamed for the power interruption.
During the hearing, Defensor sought the result of the independent investigation of the ERC, DOE, and the Philippine Electricity Market Corporation-Enforcement and Compliance Office (PEMC-ECO) into the April 2023 Panay power outage.
“Have you issued a notice of violation? Have you imposed penalties?” he said in Filipino. “I can’t believe that for a period of almost a year, we have not had a resolution from the government agencies that are supposed to oversee the energy industry, especially in Iloilo where this happened for the second time already,” said the administration lawmaker.
Defensor said someone should be held accountable and penalized for both incidents, especially because of the billions of pesos lost and the significant risk to the healthcare system posed by the power outage.
ERC chairperson Monalisa Dimalanta said the agency has facilitated discussions with the NGCP on all “recommendations, required actions, including coordination with the generating plants and several simulations that were required of the NGCP for several scenarios.”
“As per the November report of NGCP, they indicated all of these measures, almost all, I think only one remained, as completed,” she told the panel chaired by Marinduque Rep. Lord Alan Velasco.
However, despite the NGCP’s supposed compliance, energy officials confirmed that the NGCP agency failed to coordinate with stakeholders and energy officials before the January 2 grid failure which caused the massive blackout.
NGCP president Anthony Almeda told the panel that the power grid operator “handled the system in compliance with the rules and using resources at our disposal during that period.”
“We do our best to do our job on what’s happening and of course, we reiterate our call for the inclusion of generation planning and resource assessment in formulating the country’s energy development roadmap. We support the green energy initiative of government, but we ask the green baseload technologies like Baseload Nuclear be explored,” he said.
While NGCP wants to be part of the solution, he said it “cannot do it alone.” “We need the cooperation of stakeholders and the whole of government, to ensure the stability of transmission services that will support the reliable power supply for Filipinos,” he said.
Defensor also asked the NGCP to explain “why there was no significant incident notice issued and no reports to the DOE, which usually receives reports every 30 minutes every day.”
“Can NGCP tell us why there was no significant incident notice and no reports from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the afternoon on Jan. 2 at 12:06 p.m.?” the lawmaker asked, referring to the automated 30-minute status and incident updates sent through the Viber messaging app since reports were only sent out at 9:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. and were halted afterwards.
NGCP National System Operations head Clark Agustin said the agency is investigating why the automated Viber updates were not sent but said SMS updates were sent out.
“For the significant incident report, we have a criteria in the PGC (Philippine Grid Code). Based on PGC, a significant report is comprised of multiple tripping of generator with ALD (automatic load dropping). In this case, it was a tripping of a single generator without ALD,” he said.
The NGCP has said the January 2 incident was due to the unplanned outages of multiple power generators in Panay Island, triggered by the unexpected shutdown of PCPC’s 135 megawatts plant that eventually cascaded to other plants in the island.
