Marcos: Power supply being monitored

MANILA, Philippines — Efforts are underway to control electricity prices and to monitor the power supply in the face of high demand, President Marcos said yesterday.

The Philippines is experiencing a power system overload due to extreme heat, Marcos told reporters in Cotabato.

“It definitely is not an artificial crisis because the power systems are overloaded. Our consumption suddenly increased because of the extreme heat,” he said.

“That is why we are really monitoring the problems that affected the different systems... We have plans, strategies to prevent the rise in electricity prices, at least for now, in this crisis time,” he added.

The government has asked the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) to build transmission lines that would boost electricity, especially in areas not connected to the grid, he noted.

Submarine cables are needed to transfer electricity from areas with excess capacity to those that lack supply, Marcos said.

“These should have been done a long time ago but others seemed to have forgotten them. We are now catching up. But we’re continuing to monitor the power supply,” he said.

“We’re continuing to monitor the price and we’re continuing to encourage and to endorse all of the programs of NGCP so that they will increase the coverage of their transmission lines all over the country,” he added.

Yellow alert

Despite the increase in its available capacity, the Luzon grid is still placed on yellow alert amid increased peak demand following the outage of several power plants.

The Visayas grid is also placed on yellow alert as available capacity stood at 2,835 megawatts while peak demand is forecast at 2,596 MW, the NGCP said.

The Luzon grid’s available capacity stood at 14,902 MW as of yesterday morning while peak demand is at 13,823 MW.

A total of 1,443.3 MW is unavailable to the grid, NGCP said, citing forced outages of several power plants and one running on derated capacity.

EDC-Leyte A Maha Unit 1, with a capacity of 160 MW, went on an unplanned outage at 10:23 a.m.

Power shared through the Mindanao-Visayas interconnection project also declined, with the duration of the GNPower Kauswagan 4 down from 115 MW to 61 MW, NGCP noted.

The revival of old coal plants is being eyed to increase the power supply, according to energy utility provider Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) chairman and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan.

“There will always be a price to pay for the decision to take in this business, isn’t it? Because coal is the cheapest, but it’s probably the least sustainable from that perspective,” he said.

Renewable energy facilities are small and have “dependable capacities,” resulting in lower output, he added.

There is a need for “conventional, dependable” power plants, Pangilinan said.

In October 2020, the Department of Energy announced a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. This means power companies are banned from developing new coal plants.

Last Thursday, Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said the moratorium would not be lifted as more than 4,000 MW is slated to increase power supply this year. — Patrick Miguel