Manila Electric Co. and the Department of Energy asked large power consumers to join the interruptible load program to help ensure the availability of sufficient power in the dry months next year.
Energy stakeholders laid down preparations to address the expected challenges that come with the anticipated increase in demand on rising temperature during a recent webinar organized by Meralco for enterprise customers.
Electric Power Industry Management Bureau director Irma Exconde said the power industry would face challenges in 2023, which would include the historically high demand and delays in the completion of the liquefied natural gas facilities.
“We are already preparing for the contingencies for next year because of the challenges faced by the power sector,” Exconde said.
Meralco and DOE also started the proactive campaign to encourage more companies across different industries to join the government’s ILP, which can help prevent power interruptions when the grid is placed on red alert.
“Big companies, malls, hotels, buildings either have their own gen sets that can run or reduce their operations, so we can avoid brownouts. This is so that small businesses and residential users can still continue with their day-to-day activities without any power interruptions,” Meralco vice president and head for enterprise and national government Ma. Cecilia Domingo said.
She said Meralco aimed to recruit more ILP participants and increase the available de-loading capacity under ILP as these would be very important contingency measures in the dry months.
The ILP is a voluntary and demand-side management program which calls on big load customers to temporarily de-load from the grid and use their own generating units or reduce their operations instead when there is insufficient power supply.
“Since 2014, ILP in the Meralco franchise area has been implemented 26 times and since then, the program has successfully spared as many as 1.8 million households from power interruptions,” Meralco lead specialist for generation and transmission economics Ma. Leticia Sapina said.
Sapina said ILP participants would also get to help other consumers aside from being compensated for their participation in the ILP.
The total capacity available for de-loading in Meralco’s area was about 563.89 megawatts from 267 participating accounts as of Dec. 21, 2022.
ILP participants such as SM Prime Holdings Inc. and Waltermart Shopping Center Management Inc. also attested to the benefits of enrolling in the program. “ILP is a program that is really going to support the economy because we are able to minimize the impact of the lack of capacity,” SM Prime Holdings energy consultant Jaime Patinio said.
Waltermart Shopping Center Management chairman Abraham Uy said the program would not just help the public, but also the ILP participants, especially those that operate in energy-intensive industries.
“We’re actually very happy that every time there’s a power outage, there’s an advanced warning,” he said, adding that this prevents the sudden shutdown of their facilities that use electricity.
The SM Group, Waltermart, Ayala Land Inc., Belle Corp. and Citystate Centre Condo Corp. helped spare Meralco customers from blackout.
Robinsons Land Corp. also recently supported the ILP and enrolled 10 Robinsons malls with a total committed capacity of 31 MW.