House body nips ‘emergency powers’ plan

Manila Bulletin
by Myrna Velasco
October 20, 2014

With the Department of Energy (DOE) failing to justify that power supply shortfalls will really happen next year, the House committee on energy has indicated that it can now drop the option of granting President Aquino an emergency powers.

House committee on energy chairman Reynaldo V. Umali noted that “with the situation turning from bad to better, I think there is no need to rush this.”

“If this is the direction that we’re having, then there is no need anymore to pass this joint resolution,” the lawmaker stressed.

It later on became a consensus in the entire committee that the emergency powers option or the need to invoke Section 71 of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) may already be junked and that the scouring of quick fix measures must just be concentrated on the alternatives, primarily on tapping additional capacities from the interruptible load program.

Umali similarly sounded off the warning of Senate President Franklin Drilon that he has “to be extra cautious on the emergency powers bid (of the DOE)…. because this might just be the last measure I could pass.”

On the DOE’s presentation, it noted that “the level of deficiency would now just range at 21-31 megawatts versus prior simulations showing deficiencies of more than 400MW.”

The forecasted ‘red alert conditions’ had also been pared to just two probable occurrence of brownouts, compared to the previous five weeks.

The department finally admitted that its concern is not actually on shortage of supply, but on the lack of reserves if the frequency of power plant outages will not be abated.

DOE director Irma Exconde has emphasized that even in their current projections, they still factored in probable high incidence of forced outages of power plants – as anchored on historical data of generating units that conked out this year.

For the channeling of ILP capacities for Luzon grid’s additional needs in next year’s summer months, power utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) has indicated that it has been continually cornering new commitments from willing participants.

The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM), which has been supporting the DOE on its emergency powers’ bid, has finally averred that it will just abide by any direction that Congress will set. source