ERC okays P740-M Meralco projects in southern Luzon

Business Mirror
12 Mar 2014 Written by Lenie Lectura 

THREE vital projects of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) in southern Luzon worth about P740 million were approved for construction by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC). 
In separate orders, the ERC approved the utility firm’s application to construct the Mahabang Parang-Batangas City 69-kilovolt (kV) lines, FICE-Rosario 115-kV line and the Batangas City-Bolbok-Simlong 69-kV line. 
The Mahabang Parang-Batangas City line will provide an alternate feed that will address the single outage contingency problem experienced in the Batangas City and Meralco-Bolbok substations. 
To be constructed at a cost of P263,185,540, the new lines will strengthen Meralco’s system in Batangas City and San Pascual, both in Batangas province, and augment the capacity to accommodate the increasing growth in demand in these areas. 
The FICE-Rosario 115-kV line is expected to cost P284,963,699 to put up. This is a substitute for the Imus-Rosario 115-kV line, since the latter is no longer viable due to transformer capacity constraint and right-of-way problems along its route. 
“Without the project, the Rosario substation would be isolated from its 115-kV source in case of outage of the Dasmariñas-Abubot-Rosario 115-kV line in Cavite province, which may result in prolonged power interruption,” said Meralco. 
The third project of Meralco is the Batangas City-Bolbok-Simlong 69-kV line, in which the 14.2-kilometer line will be built on the roads from the tapping point near Bolbok substation up to Barangay Simlong in Batangas City. 
The project, worth P191,124,770, will be tapped to Meralco’s Mahabang Parang-Batangas City 69-kV line, which is connected to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines’s (NGCP) Mahabang Parang 230-kV delivery-point substation. 
Meralco, in its application said, the Bolbok and Batangas City substations do not currently have adequate capacity to meet the power requirements of its new customers—JG Summit Holdings Inc. and Pilipinas Shell. 
“Meralco was not able to anticipate JG’s intention to source power from it since it is a self-generating company and is not a customer of Meralco,” it said. 
The power demand in Meralco’s franchise area in Batangas City and San Pascual is rapidly increasing in the recent years with the emergence of large industrial and commercial customers. the integrated petrochemical complex of JG Summit in Barangay Simlong and Pilipinas Shell in Tabangao, both situated in Batangas City, are applying for the electric services of Meralco. 
JG and Shell are applying for the initial loads of 35MW and 5MW, respectively. Both are scheduled for commissioning in the second half of 2014. 
“The 40MW combined load applications of these two large industrial customers impose a major challenge to Meralco because aside from inadequate line capacity of the existing subtransmission circuit in the area, both customers require high reliability of power supply due to their sensitive equipment and production processes,” Meralco said. 
For its part, the ERC ruled that the construction of Batangas City-Bolbok-Simlomg 69kV line was found to be the best solution to address the large capacity and reliability requirements for the subtransmission facilities of the industrial customers in Tabangao and Simlong areas in Batangas City. source