Published
June 10, 2018, 10:00 PM By Myrna M. Velasco
As this year’s peak
demand target has already been breached and the Luzon grid frequently teetering
into extreme tight reserves, the Department of Energy (DOE) indicated that it
will be adjusting the country’s power planning forecasts especially on targets
of ‘peak demand’ growth.
Energy Secretary
Alfonso G. Cusi has incessantly sounded off that “yellow alerts are not
something to be feared of,” but for industry veterans who are well-aware of the
very long gestation period of power projects, this has been keeping them awake
at night because it could blight Filipinos on two fronts: one, would be spikes
in the rates when supply runs scarce; and two, power interruptions are not
far-off if no new investments are injected to meet longer term demand.
To the consumers’ bid
for power supply safety net, the energy department announced that it will be
integrating adjustments in the country’s Power Development Plan (PDP) given the
300-megawatt deviation logged in this year’s actual peak demand vis-à-vis
forecast. According to Energy Assistant Secretary Redentor E. Delola, the
department is currently studying which sectors or customer segments have been
soaking up bulk of the demand growth.
“We already hit peak
demand last week (May 29), that’s around 300MW difference from peak demand
forecast,” he stressed, noting that government’s projection set highest demand
at 10,561 megawatts but that had already been transgressed two weeks ago.
With the yellow alerts,
Delola explained “we’re not saying that we lack capacity, but we will need new
capacity because demand is really going up.”
On power planning adjustments,
he noted that “what we are studying right now is why there had been deviation
in the forecast – so, we’re looking at the possible reasons why it slid down,
because historically that has not been the case.”
Preliminarily, he
conveyed that what they have established had been “growth in demand not
necessarily coming from the franchise area of Meralco (Manila Electric Company)
… the growth has been coming from outside, not from the traditional economic
centers.”
He added it will then
be very necessary for the energy department to require all power utilities to
submit judiciously-calculated Distribution Development Plan (DDP), which will
then be the agency’s basis in firming up forecasts in the PDP and subsequently
in the Philippine Energy Plan.
Last week, system
operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines raised another ‘yellow
alert condition’ in Luzon grid from 1:01 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on June 4 due to the
tripping of one unit of the Ilijan gas-fired power plant supposedly ignited by
its blade path temperature.
The system operator
indicated that it was prompted on the yellow alert declaration “due to
insufficient reserve brought about by some plant’s forced outages,” while other
plants have either de-rated capacities or still out from the system.
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