EXPECT power interruptions and soaring electricity rates this summer because of unplanned and prolonged shutdown of most power plants, an independent energy think tank warned on Wednesday.
During a virtual press briefing held Wednesday afternoon, the chief data scientist of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC), Jephraim Manansala, cited outages of large coal power plants in the first quarter of this year up to today, despite the Grid Operating and Maintenance Program (GOMP) approved by the Department of Energy (DOE) which allowed planned and scheduled outages only until March 25.
The GOMP is a consolidated preventive maintenance schedule of power plants, considering the needed supply to meet the projected demand. This year’s GOMP was approved by the DOE last January 10.
The power plants cited by ICSC include:
- GN Power Dinginin Unit 1, which had 34 days of outages in 2022, contributing to the yellow alert status in January 11 and March 26;
- Calaca Unit 2, which has not been operational this first quarter;
- GN Power Mariveles Unit 1, which has experienced multiple shutdowns in the same period;
- SLTEC Units 1 and 2, where Unit 1 had 18 days of unplanned outages this year and Unit 2 had 81 days of outages in the same period and still remains on shut down;
- SLPGC Unit 1 and 2, where Unit 1 had eight days of outages this quarter while Unit 2 had 54 days of unplanned shutdowns in the same period, contributing to the yellow alert status in March 26; and
- Sual Unit 1 and 2 where Unit 1 had four days of outages in 2022 even after its planned and scheduled outage a few months ago, and was derated by 390 MW last weekend while Unit 2 had 30 days of unplanned shutdowns in the first quarter.
“We have seen plenty of them to be noncompliant with the scheduled outages to the GOMP. The GOMP requires coal plants to be no longer on outage after March 25 but today we still see multiple plants…undergoing forced outages like the Calaca unit 2 and SLTEC unit 2 in particular,” said Manansala.
“We have also seen plenty of them to have exceeded the ERC mandated allowable—outages and they exceeded this value in the first three months of the year alone.
“Plants that have undergone recent maintenance still experienced unplanned outages just a few weeks after their scheduled maintenance and even the newest, youngest coal-fired power plants are seen to experience recurring frequent outages,” said Manansala.
Moreover, the commissioning of GN Power Dinginin Unit 2 this year “appears not to be feasible” considering that unit 1 almost took 10 month to finish its commissioning stage. “So, with all these complications we can see that full compliance [with] the GOMP is less likely to occur and our more conservative orange scenario with blackouts and high cost of electricity is still the most probable to occur this summer,” stressed Manansala.
Financial risks
Sara Jane Ahmed, founder of the Financial Futures Center and finance advisor to the Vulnerable Twenty Group of Finance Ministers, discussed how the continued reliance on imported fossil fuels exposes the country to multiple financial risks. “The Philippine energy mix is skewed towards imported fossil fuels, whose prices have always been volatile. The exposure includes price instability, high prices and an unreliable power system,” said Ahmed.
“It’s best not to try to build the recovery of the Philippine economy on unpredictable fossil fuel prices, especially because renewables and storage are better placed to fuel the economy, providing long-term economic and financial stability. The spot market operator of the Philippines has called for more RE to minimize power outages. Developers and investors now need to be confident in stable and robust policies to guide the accelerated transition,” Ahmed added.
Nazrin Castro, branch manager of the Climate Reality Project Philippines, said the government must enable the environment to advance RE in the country. “This includes abolishing automatic pass through and to make carve out clauses mandatory. The moratorium on new coal should also be permanent,” said Castro.
Oxfam Philippines Country Director Lot Felizco warned that if the next set of leaders continue to make the country rely heavily on coal, oil, and fossil gas “then we will be further locked into expensive, imported, and unreliable power sources that will never be able keep up with our needs and will only hamper our pandemic recovery and long-term development.”
They also called for the immediate removal of the “pasa-load subsidy,” which has allowed power generation companies to automatically pass on volatile fossil fuel price fluctuations to consumers.
“Without a truly level playing field, Filipino households and businesses can’t enjoy what they have always deserved in the form of affordable, reliable, and secure power,” said Atty. Pedro Maniego Jr., ICSC senior policy advisor.
“Fossil fuel-dependent baseload systems are obsolete and have been replaced by residual load systems anchored on near zero marginal cost energy sources in many countries. Real modernization through flexible and distributed generation—powered by renewable energy—is what we need to spare us from the perennial outages and to establish long term energy security and affordable, reliable power.”