Business Mirror
04 Mar 2014 Written by Manuel T. Cayon
DAVAO CITY—The Association of Mindanao Rural Electric Cooperatives (Amreco) said it would confront the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) over additional power cuts above the programmed curtailment that it imposed.
Sergio Dagooc, Amreco chairman, told the BusinessMirror on Tuesday that Amreco board members would discuss the situation of electric cooperatives in Mindanao over the “sudden and unannounced” power- supply shutdown in the middle of programmed rotating brownouts that started on February 28.
“It has become a daily happening when NGCP would suddenly shut down power even if we are already following the NGCP imposition to operate within our mandated load to maintain,” he said.
“So, it is difficult to say for now how long do we experience brownouts, because on certain hours NGCP would also cut power supply to us,” he said.
In the case of his electric cooperative on Siargo Island, Surigao del Norte, “NGCP would suddenly, and without information, cut power supply to us, and this forces us to schedule the rotating brownouts even if we don’t need to do it because we have enough supply to go around.”
He said the Amreco board would meet on Wednesday to discuss and gather the data of common experience of its 27 members connected to the Mindanao grid.
The Amreco has a total membership of 33, but six of its island electric cooperatives are not connected to the mainland grid.
He said the NGCP would cut power supply going to the feeder stations, where two or more electric cooperatives are connected.
“So, electric cooperatives that did not need to be imposed additional curtailment would suffer the same consequence as the one or two cooperatives just because we share the same feeder connection.”
Then NGCP has not come out with official explanation about the additional power-supply shutdowns done during peak hours, calls to its offices and officials were left unanswered.
Amreco said it would also file its complaint during a congressional hearing on a move to recall the implementation of the Interim Mindanao Electricity Market on Wednesday in Cagayan de Oro City.
Dagooc said Amreco has no information yet on the length of rotating brownouts in each of the franchise areas of its members but he said it would be on the average from two to three hours.
“But the additional power-supply cut would have another effect of between one-and-a-half hours to two hours to the average hours of brownouts.”
Usually, it would be Zamboanga City which suffers longer brownouts, “because they don’t have additional sources of power supply, but I think it would not as long as eight hours as before due to its acquisition of power generators.”
“There are areas, however, which do not experience brownouts becauase they have additional sources, like the two franchise areas in Misamis Oriental,” he said.
The province has recently tapped the 11 megawatts (MW) generated by a new plant in Gingoog City.
But Davao City, which has additional sources from its two mini-hydroelectric power plants in Davao del Sur and its diesel-fired Bajada Power Plant, had announced it was imposing rotating brownouts.
In the NGCP daily bulletin on Tuesday, it said Mindanao was having a negative reserve supply, ranging from 86 MW to 96 MW.
As of early morning Tuesday, system capacity of the grid was 1,022 MW, while system peak demand was 1,108 MW.
However, the net system reserve in the Mindanao grid ran to as high as 360 MW between 11 a.m. and 12 noon. source
