Published
July 3, 2017, 10:00 PM By Myrna M. Velasco
Although it is already
leaning on 50-percent renewable energy on its overall supply portfolio,
Aboitiz-led Visayan Electric Company (VECO) still indicated that “balanced
approach” would be key in catering and underpinning demand growth at its
service domain.
VECO Chief Operating
Officer Anton Perdices acknowledged that RE sources could definitely pare the
country’s dependence on fossil fuels as well as mitigate climate warming
effects, but there is a need to balance that yet with socially-sensitive cost
impacts.
“In the long term, RE
is cheaper than fossil-based technologies…but the initial investment into RE is
high at present,” he stressed.
Hence, the formula that
the power utility is still embarking on would be about “maintaining a balanced
mix of generation resources.”
VECO is a joint venture
of Aboitiz Power Corporation and Vivant Corporation, and it is the power
distributor to end-users in the Metro Cebu towns and cities.
Perdices explained “a
balanced mix of renewable and thermal energy sources can address the different
levels and patterns of power demand in the most efficient and cost-effective
way.”
He qualified that in
terms of ‘intermittency dilemmas,’ there are traditional RE technologies that
are not problematic on that – the likes of geothermal and hydro, but
development scale on these technologies, aside from the need for further
ramping up, also have some investment-specific concerns.
“RE has its
advantages…some types of RE are location-specific, like geothermal and hydro.
Solar and wind farms, on the other hand, cannot provide baseload due to
reliability issues,” Perdices noted.
VECO’s service area is
continuously experiencing demand upswing and it is crucial for it to carefully
plan its supply procurement to shore up portended economic expansion as well as
the increasing power consumption of its end-users across segments.
The utility firm noted
that its peak demand in 2016 hovered at 524 megawatts; and 50.47-percent of
that had been mostly sourced from geothermal facilities in the Visayas grid.
Visayas is considerably
a development hub for RE technologies – including geothermal facilities, solar
and wind farms.
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