Manila Bulletin
by Myrna Velasco
April 18, 2014
With Mindanao grid excruciatingly distressed again with summer blackouts, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has temporarily waived requirements on certificate of compliance (COCs) for power generation firms, including embedded and self-generation facilities (SGF), as the government pleaded to them to offer their capacities for the grid’s use.
In a resolution, the ERC emphasized that the waived COCs will be for a period of 60 days, the anticipated timeframe when these power plants can already secure their respective ‘compliance license’ to operate their assets.
The regulatory body noted that it “allowed operation of said facilities without the corresponding COCs” in keeping with the mandate of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) on ensuring electricity supply.
“All generation companies, including embedded generators and owners of stand-by generating facilities, which have been directed to operate and which have not been issued their respective COCs, shall apply for the issuance of their respective COC-IPP (independent power producer) within a period of 60 days.”
That timeframe has been anchored on the issued Circular of the Department of Energy (DOE) last month directing “all existing generation companies including embedded generators and owners and operators of standby generating facilities, to make available their generating units to augment the power supply in the Mindanao grid.”
The ERC further qualified that the owners and operators of self-generating facilities already granted with COCs would have to apply “for conversion of their COCs from COC-SGF to COC-IPP” also within the prescribed 60-day timeframe.
The regulator similarly directed that “any generation company, embedded generator and owner of standby generating facility, which fails to file the said application within the 60-day period shall cease from commercially operating its facilities as a power supplier in Mindanao.”
It must be culled that Mindanao power supply had been thrown over the edge because of the ‘repair work’ that must be done at the 210-megawat Steag power facility following the damage it sustained from the February 27 blackouts in the grid.
The energy department and regulators are apparently on panicky mode when it comes to policy enforcements because it is no longer just Mindanao grid this time that is experiencing critical supply, but even the country’s economic hub of Luzon grid.
Next year’s scenarios will be even more forbidding because Visayas grid’s power supply is also seen hitting critical levels. Mindanao, however, may finally get its much-hankered for solution to long-term supply woes with the commercial commissioning of new power plants in the grid. source
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