Blackouts remote in summer —Energy

Manila Standard Today
By Alena Mae S. Flores | Apr. 15, 2014 at 12:01am

The Energy Department on Monday discounted any blackout in Luzon in April despite increase in power demand and the tight supply although he warned that power reserve is expected to be “very thin” in May.

Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said in a televised interview that for this coming Holy Week, demand will be low due to non-working days.

“Manufacturing are also closed. Our outlook on the demand side is very low, that’s also the reason why the Spex (Shell Philippines Exploration B.V.) restriction has been moved on those dates,” he said.

Spex, which operates the Malampaya gas facility in northwest Palawan has restricted the output of the gas field from April 16 to April 17.

“This has something to do with the recently installed Malampaya Phase 2, in which there are debris that they have to take out every now and then. Its effect on the prices, there is none; if it has, it is very minimal,” Petilla said.

He said power plants that were on outage namely the Masinloc and Pagbilao coal plants were expected to come online today that will bring in additional reserves to the grid.

“So, we should be okey even if we have restriction. Actually, Spex was scheduled (Sunday), but we have it moved in time for the two plants to come in,” Petilla said.

“So, there is no brownout. Up to the end of the month, we do not see any problem, but for May we will never know because it’s very sensitive, reserves are very thin.”

But he aid “it all depends if there will be plants that will have an outage...By the end of the month, we will know which plants will be on ng term-outage, then we can give an outlook for May. But for April, more or less it’s safe, knock on wood of course that no plant will bog down.”

Petilla said power prices are dictated by market forces although he admits that prices go up on a tight supply situation .

“We never dictate the price. It’s going to be a tight supply. What the prices will be, it all depends on the market. We cannot really tell the prices but projections can be made and projections have to come from Meralco because they have the portfolio,” he said.

Meralco’s rates spiked by P0.89 per kilowatthour in the April bill of customers which reflected the tight power supply in March.

Meralco, meanwhile, expects its generation charge to go up by P1.72 per kWh in the May bills. source