Aussie energy expert pushes Visayas project

Australian consultancy firm Intelligent Energy Systems Pty Ltd (IES), commissioned by the Department of Energy (DOE) to assess the readiness of commercial operations of the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM) in the Visayas, has urged the government to push through with the improvement of the Visayas- based transmission lines.

The DOE decided to indefinitely defer the implementation of WESM Visayas using the IES recommendation as its basis. WESM Visayas was supposed to kick off last January, was moved to a later date, until the DOE finally shelved its implementation.

In its report, IES said the Visayas region is not ready yet to have its own spot market due to the inadequacy of power supply and demand in the area.

With this, IES identified the upgrading of the transmission lines as one of the remedial measures to prevent any power shortage in the province.

Aside from upgrading the transmission lines and construction of new power facilities in the area, IES suggested the market participants should enter into long-term contracts.

“At first glance Visayas appears as though it will have adequate generation to meet peak demands. The estimated coincident peak demand in the region for 2008 will be around 1,300 megawatts (mw) and the generation capacity in Visayas around 1,700 mw with the potential to import 150 mw through the HVDC connection to Luzon. However, the reality is that Visayas will have a very tight demand and supply balance,” it noted.

IES noted that Visayas is still suffering from inadequate reserves.

“It is quite clear Cebu, Negros and Panay combined have a deficit of generation, 268 mw. This deficit can be met with the 360 mw of power available from the interconnection with Leyte but if generation reserves are considered then the situation is much tighter,” it said.

“In the case of Panay alone the situation is worse with a deficit of 70 mw, which can be less than capability of the interconnection to Negros (60 mw to 100 mw depending on stability limits). Thus when the possibility of generator outages and any reserve requirements for frequency control are considered, it can be seen that the Visayas grid is very susceptible to supply shortages.”

The IES report also noted that “involuntary load shedding is a regular feature of the Visayas grid.”

“The load shedding is occurring due to shortages of supply. The loads in Panay are the most often shed. This is because the power flows are from Leyte to Cebu then Negros and then Panay and consequently shedding load in Panay means less load needs to be shed due the marginal losses in providing power to Panay.

However, even though this is an efficient solution, it is not very equitable,” the report said.