Power shortage won't end just yet

 CEBU, Philippines - The promise of stable power by late this week will not happen.

Cebuanos will have no choice but to bear with the daily brownouts lasting for two and half hours in the Metropolitan Cebu area and an hour in the far cities and towns as power supply in the Cebu-Negros-Panay grid is set to stabilize next week instead.

“Power supply in CNP should stabilize by next week after power plants currently under maintenance will be back online,” said Ethel Natera, corporate communications department manager of the Visayan Electric Company (Veco), the largest power distributor here.

Yesterday, Veco was forced to implement a manual load dropping or rotation brownouts in its franchise area that lasted from one and half to two and a half hours depending on the demand in a specific time.

Natera said that this was due to the CNP grid that continues to be limited as a result of the high demand plus the inability of Luzon to share power.

For the evening peak yesterday, the shortage according to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines reached 240 megawatts.

Of the 240 MW shortage, NGCP asked Veco to shed a load of 150 MW.

But with Veco’s independent power producers and customers involved in the Interruptible Load Program, the company’s net share was reduced to 93.4 MW.

“However, this means VECO might still implement rotation brownouts in its franchise area of between 1.5 to 2 hours,” Natera said.

The Cebu Electric Cooperative, Inc. (CEBECO) I and II also implemented rotation brownouts that lasted 50 minutes to one and a half hours.

CEBECO I, which is supplying power to 17 towns and cities in the south of Cebu, needed to shed 3MW out of their 26MW maximum demand yesterday due to the limited supply from the NGCP.

CEBECO I gets 95 percent of its supply from the grid while the rest come from the mini-hydro power plants in Barili, Badian and Basak, Mandaue.

Peter Señeres, General Manager of CEBECO II was asked by the NGCP to shed 20 MW, but was only able to shed 10MW of load.

CEBECO II is 100 percent dependent to the grid so every time there is a shortage, CEBECO II is forced to implement a rotation brownout lasting up to one and half hours.

CEBECO II is servicing the northern part from Compostela to Tabuelan, a total of 11 towns and two cities.

Señeres said that they started implementing rotation brownouts since 2008.

Unlike the first two franchises, CEBECO III has no problem with the power supply since they are embedded with Toledo Power Corporation.

No rotation brownouts are experienced in Toledo City, Balamban, Asturias, Pinamungahan and Aloguinsan because Toledo Power Corp is able to supply them more than the 14MW daily demand.

TPC and CEBECO III have an agreement that the former will supply them 15 MW daily.

Mactan Electric Corporation servicing Mactan Island is on the same situation as the others as it has to implement rotation brownouts, said MECO General Manager Gilbert Pagobo.

Out of MECO’s 50MW total demand, it has been asked to shed 15MW with rotation brownout set at one hour.

Poor Planning

The business sector has blamed the ineffective long term planning of the Department of Energy (DOE) for the magnified shortage of power supply in Cebu.

Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) president Eric Ng Mendoza said had DOE been effective in their long term planning to invite power plant investors to anticipate the tripling demand of power by this time, the Philippines or Cebu may not have to suffer from power shortage problem.

“In many cases in the last few years, we [business sector] had been expressing our concerns of power scarcity to be experienced by Cebu around this time, but only to realize that our pleadings were useless,” Mendoza said.

Although, the business sector had been cooperating with VECO in different programs such as the Time-Of-Use (TOU) program, Interruptible Load Program (ILP), are working out, still the shortage is too huge that needs the immediate help from new power supplier such as the Cebu Energy Development Corporation’s (CEDC) supposedly running 82-megawatt unit.

“We have done our share of sharing and saving energy to help the shortage, but it seems that we need a bigger help here,” Mendoza said.

Meanwhile, businesses are sacrificing to invest on additional cost of power by buying fuel and buying large capacity generators.

Businesses again, have to suffer in terms of competitiveness in the borderless economy, especially the exporters, also the local manufacturers, as the power shortage spells unfriendly business environment.

For his part, Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) power core group chairman Carlos Co said that this power shortage of Cebu had been projected by the private sector even way before five years ago.

Still, the government failed to invite more power plant producers to immediately save the then threatening power shortage, which now becomes the reality. — /NLQ (THE FREEMAN)