“It is time to rely more on flexible renewable power plants that provide cheap and secure electricity during peak demand.”
The red and yellow alerts hoisted over the electricity grids in the Philippines are the symptoms of a poorly planned power supply management. The warnings confirmed our fears—the Philippines does not have enough power capacity for distribution in the country’s major electricity grids.
Aging old power plants, the unfavorable hot weather and El Niño, over-reliance on baseload coal-fired generating stations and the reluctance to tap renewable energy sources to fill in the gap during peak demand periods have all contributed to thin reserves.
Energy authorities, perhaps, should recast their outlook on power supply given the country(s growing population and expanding economy. One industry source noted that better planning, forecasting and management are needed to avoid being caught off guard, like what happened in recent weeks.
The dry season comes every year, along with reduced power reserves because of the limited output of our hydro-electric dams, and authorities have all the time to assess the electricity outlook and pinpoint the supply gaps.
The Department of Energy, thus, should encourage more investments in the sector and the private sector is more than willing to answer the call. It should be at the forefront of pursuing energy policies, focus more on renewable sources and adopt stricter regulatory measures that resonate with the country’s unique tropical environment.
A big problem plaguing the energy sector is the reliability of the current crop of generating facilities—mostly old, dilapidated coal plants. It is time to rely more on flexible renewable power plants that provide cheap and secure electricity during peak demand.
The government must draw up strategies to address these reliability issues and, at the same time, ensure long-term sustainability and resilience aligned with our environmental thrust as a nation close to the equatorial line.
More importantly, consumers should not shoulder the burden of supply lack and suffer from power interruptions during this intense dry season because of poor planning and foresight.
More power plant projects are in the pipeline, including a planned liquefied natural gas facility bankrolled by three of the country’s biggest energy players. This $3.3-billion integrated project will play a crucial role in boosting supply and give the Philippines some level of relief come the next dry season in 2025. The project spearheaded by businessmen Manny V. Pangilinan of the Metro Pacific Group, Ramon S. Ang of conglomerate San Miguel Corp. and Sabin Aboitiz of the Aboitiz Group is sure to brighten the power outlook.
This project, though, will not be enough. The electricity interruptions that Filipinos are now experiencing and the current thin power reserves as a result of higher demand should prompt our energy authorities to speed up the approval process on new generation plants.
Electricity demand normally increases during the dry season and peaks in May. As early as last week, however, demand surpassed last year’s peak and this year’s forecast.
National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) again placed the Luzon grid on yellow alert status on May 7 due to insufficient reserves. NGCP put the available capacity at 15,167 megawatts (MW) compared with a peak demand of 13,714MW. NGCP issues a yellow alert when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.
“Four plants have been on forced outage since 2023, between January and March 2024, and 9 since April 2024, while another is running on derated capacity, for a total of 1406.8MW unavailable to the grid,” says NGCP.
With the higher-than-expected demand eclipsing an already crippled supply, NGCP and distribution utilities are implementing manual load dropping (MLD) or rotating power interruptions to protect the grid system’s integrity. Metro Manila and other areas covered by the franchise of Manila Electric Co. were luckily spared from widespread rotating power interruptions due to the activation of the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) partners.
Big power users like malls and commercial buildings under the government’s ILP use their own generator sets, instead of drawing power from the grid, to lessen the demand and save households from electricity interruptions. But the ILP does not add to the power capacity—it is an admission of a deteriorating supply situation.
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