Power demand seen to remain flat this year

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine power demand is projected to remain flat this year, with only the residential sector as the main driver for growth amid the coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is revising its supply-demand forecast this year and next year as the new normal kicks in.

With power demand heavily affected by the effects of COVID-19, DOE assistant secretary Redentor Delola said the agency expects to miss its growth target this year.

“We expect a big change in demand growth this year. But as we slowly pick up, as we slowly normalize, we’re seeing demand to normalize. But for this year, we’re seeing a huge impact (from the pandemic). In fact, we’re seeing no growth for the year, so we’ll remain at levels that we have at 2019 then by next year, we expect minimal growth,” he said.

DOE said peak demand for the year is seen at 12,285 megawatts (MW) for Luzon, 2,519 MW for Visayas and 2,278 MW for Mindanao.

Last year, Luzon’s actual peak demand reached 11,344 MW.

Among the sector, only the residential segment is expected to register significant growth, even beyond what the DOE projected, Delola said.

“What happened during the pandemic was the residential consumption increased so it cornered a bigger share in the total, but it is still not able to compensate the drop from the industrial and commercial sectors,” he said.

Among the three main islands, Luzon saw the biggest drop in power demand when the enhanced community quarantine was imposed mid-March.

Delola said the residential sector dominated the demand in Visayas and Mindanao, whereas the industrial sector also corners a big chunk of power requirements in Luzon.

“In Visayas and Mindanao, it’s mostly residential driving the demand. In Luzon, historically, it’s around 30 percent residential and 30 percent industrial,” he said.

With the changes in demand profile, the DOE is revising its supply-demand outlook per industry.

“Once we collect all these info we will update the forecast of supply and demand, by then we will know what the movements are individually per industry as we move towards the new normal,” Delola said.

“For now, we have initial outputs but we still have to review it because those are just based on assumptions given by our economic teams. We don’t have the exact data yet from the readings of distribution utilities (DUs),” the DOE official said.