ENERGY Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi on Tuesday said the rotating power outage incidents in Luzon two weeks ago were “deeply regrettable” and that the power industry stakeholders “must share collective responsibility.”
“Based on the figures, we were supposed to have sufficient power supply that week. Regrettably, what could not have been forecasted were the simultaneous unplanned outages of several power plants.
Despite having an excess of 1,131 megawatts over peak demand, the unfortunate unforeseen shutdowns of several plants at the same time resulted in 1,502-MW loss of available capacity,” Cusi’s statement read.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has held three press briefings this month but Cusi was visibly absent. However, delegated DOE officials were present to answer questions from media.
In a chance interview, Cusi, when asked to comment on the brownouts experienced by electricity consumers in certain parts of Luzon on April 11 and April 12, said, “All the pressure is on me, but what can I do?” Nonetheless, he gave assurances that the DOE “will be better” and that the agency will learn from these challenges.
In his statement, Cusi said the DOE’s peak demand projections are made available through the Distribution Development Plan, which is formulated in collaboration with the generation companies, distribution utilities (DUs), the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) and the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market.
“The entire industry must share collective responsibility over what happened. This includes the DOE, the NGCP, the Energy Regulatory Commission [ERC], the DUs and the generating companies.
“There are no quick fixes to such incidents. Rest assured that the DOE is continuously finding ways to prevent a similar incident from happening again,” said Cusi.
For now, Cusi said the DOE is working closely with the ERC to ensure that NGCP complies with their Concession Agreement and the power reserve requirements under the Grid Code.
Aside from fast-tracking the approval of new power plants, the DOE is closely monitoring the construction of transmission lines, critical in ensuring power reliability for the country, particularly the Visayas-Mindanao Interconnection Project (VMIP) which is to be completed on or before 2020. This will help export the excess power of Mindanao, to the Visayas and Luzon.
Energy Undersecretary Felix William Fuentebella said during a press conference on Tuesday that the agency is still collating all data that will be submitted to the ERC and the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC), which has served notice it will conduct an investigation to rule out possible collusion among power plant operators.
On April 15, Fuentebella said the agency will elevate to President Duterte, ERC and the PCC its findings on the red alert warnings and widespread rotational blackouts.
“What we’re looking at is this: You have a conglomerate of plants that went on shutdown. Plant A is on scheduled shutdown. There’s no problem with that. Plant B, however, went on forced shutdown. We will look at the behavior of Plants C, D and E and their bid offers at the spot market. Did they come out with a strategy to recover the loss of Plant B and pass it on to consumers?” Fuentebella said.
He said the agency is in the process of collating and validating the facts. After which, the DOE will arrive at an analysis and submit a report to the ERC, PCC and Malacañang.