By Lenie
Lectura - September 27, 2017
THE MANILA Electric Co.
(Meralco) expects energy sales volume to grow by “close to 5 percent” for 2017,
higher than its earlier projection of 3 percent.
“Last year demand
increased by close to 8.8 percent. This year we’re seeing close to, we’ll
probably end the year at close to 5 percent at a high base,” Meralco
President Oscar Reyes said at the sidelines of the 35th Asean Ministers on
Energy Meeting held on Wednesday.
Reyes added he meant
that Meralco may post about 5 percent higher energy sales volume from last
year’s 40,142 gigawatt-hours.
As of August this year,
Reyes said sales growth was registered at 4.2 percent.
He pointed to the
strong growth of the domestic economy as a major factor behind the company’s
energy sales volume.
“Commercial subscribers
remain strong. Surprisingly, industrial is picking up. On the
commercial side, all of these developments you see, such as real estate, retail
trade, business-process outsourcing (BPOs), Philippine online gaming operators,
new hotels, restaurants are all contributing to the growth,” Reyes explained.
He added there is a
need to build up adequate capacity to address possible shortage in power supply
because of rising demand.
“I think we don’t want
to raise an alarm. It’s really just a realization that you’re better off with
adequate capacity because it takes time to build. The yellow alerts are a
reality,” he said. “I think it just shows potential vulnerability of the entire
system and you are better with adequate capacity. If we cut it too thinly and
there are a bit delays, then we’re going into a situation as we move to 2019 to
2022.”
Meralco Senior Vice
President and Head of Utility Economics Lawrence Fernandez has expressed
concern over the frequent number of times that the Luzon grid was placed on
yellow alert notice.
A yellow alert means
there are not enough reserves to cover the largest running generating unit at
the time but does not necessarily lead to power outages. There have been three
instances of yellow alerts raised since August 30.
Fernandez said the
yellow alerts were triggered by forced outages of several large
power-generation facilities. In turn, these triggered the Automatic Load
Dropping (ALD) scheme of Meralco. This meant that certain areas in
Meralco experienced momentary interruptions to help the grid recover from the
generation outages.
“A yellow alert means
there were not enough reserves to cover the largest running generating unit at
the time,” Fernandez said. “We are concerned. Since August 30 there has been a
once-a-week incidence of yellow alert. Our concern is that, while it has
not led to red alerts, automatic load dropping occurs when power plants trip.
This means some of the customers lose electric service because of the tripping
of some power plants,” the Meralco official explained.
Fernandez commented
that the yellow alerts and the triggering of the ALD mechanism signal the need
for additional capacity in the Luzon grid.
“We need new
capacities,” he said, pointing out that as demand for power continues to
increase, additional generation supply will be needed, both to meet new demand
and to improve the reliability of the electric system.
“While new capacity had
been coming in since 2016, demand has also been growing. In the Meralco
area alone, electricity consumption had grown almost 4 percent to date.
This, despite having registered a robust growth of 8.1 percent in 2016, due to
the effects of El Niño and elections-related spending,” Fernandez explained.
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