House Energy panel OKs PNoy request for special powers

(Updated 3:31 p.m.) The House Energy committee on Tuesday approved the measure giving President Benigno Aquino III special powers to address the looming power shortage in Luzon next year.

 

Voting 18-1 with 1 abstention, the panel approved the House Joint Resolution 21 barely a week after the bill was filed authorizing the executive to establish additional generating capacity for the Luzon grid through the Interruptible Load Program (ILP).

 

Akbayan party-list Rep. Walden Bello abstained from the voting while Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares opposed the measure.

 

House Energy panel chair Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali expects to sponsor the proposal at the plenary on Monday, November 24, once Aquino certifies it as urgent. He plans to have the measure approved on third and final reading before the end of November.

 

“We have 4 o’clock until the wee hours of the morning to cover a much as we could [during the plenary debates]. In this particular case, I think the most contentious portion is really the lease and buying of plants. Since it is no longer included as an option, I think there will not be not much [issues raised] during the plenary debates,” he said.

 

Following the hearings, Umali said the House panel will amend the resolution to reflect the updated figures submitted by the Department of Energy.

 

The joint resolution indicated a maximum projected supply shortfall of 1,004 megawatts (MW) for certain weeks during the summer months of 2015, of which 600 MW is needed to meet the immediate reserve while 404 MW is needed to meet the required contingency reserve.

 

A total of four weeks of yellow alert is forecast for the Luzon grid due to thin reserves next summer. The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines raises a yellow alert when the total reserve is less than the capacity of the largest plant online. For the Luzon grid, this is 647 MW.

 

Conflicting figures

 

Colmenares argued Congress should not rush in granting the executive’s request for additional authority, since the Department of Energy cannot reconcile its figures on the projected supply shortage with that of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

 

“We also do not want to have brownouts. But granting emergency powers to the President would eventually result in a higher price of electricity. The conflicting data of the DOE and NGCP shows there’s no imminent supply shortage,” he said.

 

Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla explained the DOE outlook differs with the NGCP figures because the latter traditionally does not factor in forced outages in its forecast. DOE used the data on forced outages that occurred this year for the 2015 outlook.

 

“We experienced a forced outage of 1,300 MW last March but the average we use is 600. It’s not every day that an outage of 1,300 MW will occur… but if it happens in 2015, we will not have any defense if we don’t address the issue of reserves,” he said.

 

'The more, the merrier'

 

Petilla said it is better for the DOE to have ample reserves than a specific reserve requirement to meet. He believes the “sky is the limit” when it comes to tapping private generator sets for additional capacity.

 

“It’s not how much capacity we need but how much we can get. Let’s get all [available gensets] if that’s possible. The more, the merrier,” he said.

 

The Retail Electricity Suppliers Association’s (RESA) has signed up 321.93 MW while the Manila Electric Company has 240 MW of committed capacities in its books.

 

ILP involves asking malls, factories and other businesses to use their own generator sets when the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines expects electricity supply to fall short of demand.

 

DOE will work with the House Energy panel to iron out details on compensating companies enrolled in ILP, Petilla said. The agency is eyeing tapping the Malampaya fund to subsidize the cost of reimbursing ILP participants.

 

Under House Joint Resolution 21, government will reimburse private entities owning self-generating facilities for fuel expenses and “reasonable recovery for their use in accordance with rules of the Energy Regulatory Commission. 

 

Businesses not registered under ILP may be manually deloaded from the grid when supply reaches critical levels, but they will not receive any compensation from government. – VS, GMA News