posted April 20, 2016 at 11:45 pm by Alena Mae S. Flores
Power rates will likely rise in May
as coal plants undergo maintenance shutdown and power plants shift to diesel as
fuel, the Energy Department said Wednesday.
Energy Secretary Zenaida Monsada
said the power plants mostly using coal were forced to undergo maintenance
shutdown before the elections to ensure they would be online by May.
“We replaced coal with bunker or
diesel-fired plants. Like Malaya, we asked it to run and it uses special fuel
oil, in between bunker and diesel. It’s still more expensive than coal,”
Monsada said.
She said the participants of the
interruptible load program that were tapped during the April 15 power shortage
had to use their generators running on diesel and gasoline.
ILP participants are compensated for
not drawing power from the grid during times of shortage and for running their
own generating sets.
ILP helped contain the peak demand
at 9,416 megawatts on April 15.
A total of 247 MW of power was
deloaded from 121 participants, sparing 290,000 customers in Metro Manila and
nearby provinces from rotating brownouts.
“So because demand has been going
up, electricity prices will also likely go up because of the use of diesel as
fuel,” Monsada said.
Monsada also said the higher
electricity cost was “a consequence of meeting the necessary power supply.”
“The plants did not go offline on
purpose. It so happens that it’s summer and they have to be on maintenance
schedule,” Monsada said.
She said that by going into
maintenance shutdown prior to the elections, the power plants would be
available and running during the critical period a week before and a week after
the elections.
The Energy Department called on
electricity consumers to conserve energy not only during the summer period, but
throughout the year.
“Historically, power consumption
spikes during hot summer months as more consumers spend time in their homes and
use cooling equipment to make them feel comfortable,” it said.
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