ERC urged to penalize NGCP for non-compliance in contracting enough power reserves

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Wednesday called on the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to impose penalties against the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) for its alleged failure to contract the required power reserves to support its system.

“The problem is they (NGCP) are not contracting the right amount of reserves,” Gatchalian said during the virtual Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum.

“Since NGCP is not contracting, ERC should punish them so the next question is why is ERC not punishing them? Clearly there is a violation of the policy,” the senator said.

Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate committee on energy, said he called a public hearing on June 10 to look into the rotational brownouts that plagued the Luzon grid early last week.

A series of Red and Yellow alerts plagued the Luzon grid for three straight days - May 31, June 1 and 2 - causing rotating power interruptions.

The DOE blamed the “forced or unplanned outages of power plants and the lack of ancillary services owned or operated by the private sector.”

The Energy Department also said that NGCP failed to comply with the required firm ancillary service contracts or reserves, which should be 4% of the power demand and could be tapped in case power plants go offline.

“That is what we want to find out tomorrow,” Gatchalian said.

Sought for comment, NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza said: “NGCP for the most part fully contracted our ancillary services requirement, needed to balance and stabilize the grid operations as required under the Philippine Grid Code.”

GMA News Online has reached out to ERC chairman Agnes Devanadera for her comment but no response yet has been received as of this posting. — RSJ, GMA News