Manila Times.net
Published : Saturday, June 23, 2012 00:00 Written by : 
| A worker installs electric meters on top of a post along Batasan Road in Quezon City on Friday. PHOTO BY MIGUEL DE GUZMAN |
A House leader has warned of new power rates hikes as Luzon’s grid power supply has remained thin.
Rep. Teodoro Casiño of Bayan Muna party-list, chairman of House Committee on Small Businesses and Entrepreneurship Chairman, said that data from the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) shows that Luzon’s grid power supply is only 101 megawatts, a level that puts Luzon under yellow alert.
This NGCP record, said Casiño, runs contrary to previous pronouncements that the Luzon grid enjoys a healthy buffer of 1,700 to 2,000 megawatts on any given day.
“We should be wary that the so-called threat might be deliberately aimed at manipulating the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market prices,” Casiño said. “We are calling on regulators, especially the Energy Regulatory Commission, to keep their eyes wide open and put their ears on the ground and watch out for signs of price manipulation.”
Earlier, Energy Undersecretary Josefina Patricia Asirit was quoted as saying that the reduction in power supply reserves was due to the outage of several critical facilities such as the 1,200-megawatt Sual coal-fired power plant in Pangasinan and the 300-megawatt Calaca coal-fired power plant in Batangas.
But Casiño maintained that the simultaneous repair of the power plants is suspicious.
“There is no reason why the repairs should be held all at the same time when there’s no calamity at hand. The effect of this is to constrict supply and therefore jack up prices in the spot market,” Casiño pointed out.
The Manila Electric Company recently jacked up its generation charge to 54 centavos in Manila. source
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