Rotating power outages in Mindanao feared

By Keith Bacongco Philippine Star Updated March 16, 2012 10:17 AM


DAVAO CITY – The Association of Mindanao Rural Electric Cooperatives (Amreco) hit the Department of Energy (DOE) for solely blaming the electric cooperatives’ inadequate services that resulted to two-to-four-hour daily power outages in Mindanao.


Sergio Dagooc, Amreco president, clarified that the DOE should not single out the cooperatives for not tapping available energy sources from two privately-owned power barges.


This after the DOE accused the electric cooperatives as being the ones causing the rotating brownouts because of their refusal to contract more capacities from the available diesel-fueled plants.


“Why the government is not compelling industrial clients to also contract out from these barges? Why the government is compelling us to contract out with these expensive barges,” the Amreco president asked.


But Dagooc clarified that some of the electric cooperatives in Mindanao have already 89 megawatts of the 200-megawatt capacity power barges.


“But this is more advantageous on the part of these industrial clients because they can charge the power charge to their products. Unlike us, who will pay for the expensive power charge? It is the poorest of the poor,” said Dagooc who is also the general manager of Siargao Island Electric Cooperatives .


Reports showed that an NPC rate is at P4.87 per kilowatt hour while private power barges costs P9.10 per kilowatt-hour.


He said had the power barges were not privatized, there could be no power shortage in Mindanao today. “If the power barges are still owned by the government, we could have easily tapped them.”


Amreco is composed of 33 rural electric cooperatives, which supplies electricity to nearly two million household, commercial, industrial and institutional consumers in Mindanao.


Clint Pacana, Amreco executive director, said the Amreco members could not afford the rates of the privately-owned power barges because its rate per kilowatt hour is much higher compared to government-owned power plants such as Agus and Pulangi hydropower plants.


Pacana added that business establishments as well as household consumers are already worried that the power outages may extend up to eight hours a day when dry season comes because water levels in in hydro plant complexes would eventually drop.


Actual need


Dagooc, meanwhile, admitted that there is really shortage of power supply in Mindanao but it is not as big as what the DOE is projecting, which is at least 200 megawatts.


“We are short of around 110 to 120 megawatts only,” he said, adding that the National Power Corporation should be the one declare the actual power needed to avert the crisis instead of National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).


Because the NGCP, said Dagooc, is just like a “traffic enforcer,” saying that it is not the job of NGCP to declare how much the shortage really is but it should be the Napocor because it is a generation issue.


“The daily two to four hour power outages in Mindanao are quite alarming and it seems that Malacañang has offered no immediate solutions to the problem,” Dagooc pointed out.


He added that this is the same problem they had been raising to the national government in the last five years and yet it has not provided concrete solutions.


Based on the data obtained from the Mindanao Development Authority (Minda), showed that as of March 09 this year, the Mindanao Generation Complex and Independent Power Producers (IPP) have generation capabilities of only 1,161 MW but the demand hit 1,277 MW per record of NGCP.


On the same data, the NGCP’s demand forecast for March is 1,277MW and will reach 1,347MW by the end of the year. But it showed that the NPC’s dependable capacity for March is 1,122MW only, which means it is short of negative 47MW.


By April, the demand forecast may be reduced to 1,259MW and the dependable capacity may also drop to 942MW, which also means a deficit of negative 77MW.


On February, the NGCP has admitted that the cause of the daily power curtailment in the Mindanao is the “acute shortage” of power in the region and not any transmission related issue.