Published March 1, 2017, 10:00 PM By Myrna M.
Velasco
On its being fond of “dreaming the
impossible dream”, the Department of Energy (DOE) has indicated in a press
statement that it is targeting the power interconnection of Sabah in Malaysia
to the off-grid system of Palawan in the Philippines.
It is a proposal that DOE Assistant
Secretary Leonido J. Pulido III has helped put forward in the recent strategic
planning of the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asian
Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) cluster discussion on power and energy.
It was also reinforced as a power
connectivity proposition of the Philippines in the BIMP-EAGA Business Council
(BEBC), with the DOE noting that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) is set to
be signed April this year on purported realization of the power link-up
project.
The missing pieces of the puzzle on
this proposal, however, are the cost of interconnecting the power systems and
how ready the Palawan consumers are at shouldering that eventual financial
burden; and how viable it can be to link up electricity systems of two regional
networks that may traverse “conflict areas” in the South China Sea.
“It will provide the needed capacity
addition to the country,” Pulido said, but no data for now up to what extent of
capacity Sabah can share given the very tight government control that is still
exercised in Malaysia’s power sector. Palawan, being on island mode, is also
not in need of humongous capacity unless it will be connected eventually to the
country’s main power grid.
Infrastructure-linked ASEAN Power
Grid (APG) has long been in the plans of the Southeast Asian region, but
physical as well as cost-impacting interconnection to the Philippines had
always been acknowledged as hurdle.
Beyond the starry-eyed goal of the
Palawan-Sabah power link-up, Pulido noted that the key output of the cluster
meeting delves with the formulation of the nine-year Power and Energy
Infrastructure Cluster (PEIC) Roadmap for the different sub-sectors. This shall
cover the 2017 to 2025 planning stretch.
The segments to be covered in the
plan would include power interconnection, renewable energy, rural
electrification and sub-regional energy efficiency and conservation measures.
The energy and power cluster
roadmap, it was emphasized, shall then be set as rolling pipeline project and
an input to the final BIMP-EAGA Vision 2017-2025.
Pulido reckoned that the thematic
discussions at the BIMP-EAGA energy cluster are also aligned with the 8-point
agenda that the Philippine DOE has been pushing for.
He further noted “the need to
strengthen the resiliency of energy infrastructures in the sub-region,” while
also acknowledging Brunei’s proposal on renewable energy assessment “for each
country intending to identify feedstock as fuel for a proposed biomass
generating facility project.”
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