The Luzon grid will continue to suffer an insufficient supply of power until July 1, with rotating brownouts likely to persist until June 10, the Department of Energy (DOE) told a congressional hearing Friday.
"At the end of this week until next week, we see no power plant coming in, so we will remain below the red line,” said the director of the DOE’s Electric Power Industry Management Bureau, Mario Marasigan. “There are still insufficient reserves, so a red alert will still be raised.”
Marasigan said about 2,000 megawatts of capacity were offline when the red and yellow alerts were raised last week as most power plants were on extended forced shutdowns.
But Marasigan told the committee on energy headed by Rep. Juan Miguel Arroyo of Pampanga that the department is hoping the situation will improve in the next few weeks, as more plants that were shut down would go online and as electrical consumption declines.
Arroyo's committee conducted an investigation after the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) warned of a looming power crisis and placed the entire Luzon grid under red alert due to insufficient power supply.
The NGCP said the current available capacity in the Luzon grid is at 11,729 megawatts while the daily demand peak reached as high as 11,514 megawatts in the past seven days.
The DOE earlier said it is considering filing charges of economic sabotage against power plants and gathering evidence on those that violated a policy that bans them from conducting preventive maintenance from April to June, when demand for electricity is high.
Energy Undersecretary Wimpy Fuentebella has said lead lawyers in the Energy Department are gathering evidence.
It was unlikely, however, that power plants colluded to cause a shortage in the supply of electricity because the government has set a fixed price on power, he said.
Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) chairperson Agnes Devanadera said the current tightness of power supply is due to a "confluence of events."
"There is an increase in demand due to the summer season, something that is a perennial problem during this time and also there is a decrease in available supply primarily due to the planned, unplanned and derating of power plants," Devanadera said.
She said most plants in Luzon are 16 years old and can no longer be as efficient as they were before.
She said the ERC is continuing with its own investigation into the power outages that have exceeded the annual limit.
At the same hearing, officials from the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said their customers still experienced brownouts, even though the company has sufficient contracts with power suppliers.
They said the supply from power producers with which they have contracts still need to pass through the Luzon grid.
Once the Luzon grid experiences yellow and red alerts and plunges into deficiency levels, it would then be up to the system operator, the NGCP, to equitably allot the remaining supply of electricity to other areas in Luzon. It is also the NGCP that determines which areas will experience rotating brownouts.
At present, 90 percent of Meralco’s power supply comes from bilateral contracts and power supply agreements, while the remaining 10 percent is sourced from the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM).
“From a Meralco franchise perspective, we do have ample supply for our customers. Having said that though, the power supply situation in Luzon affects us as well because we are part of the Luzon grid,” said Meralco President and Chief Executive Officer Ray C. Espinosa.
“Once the supply shortage affects the entire Luzon Grid the system operator in consultation with the DOE is forced to undertake manual load dropping. It means even if we are amply covered by our supply contracts, we will have to share in the burden of reducing the supply shortage otherwise significant issues and grid security will be affected,” he added.
The Department of Health (DOH), meanwhile, assured the public that vaccination sites have contingency measures to deal with possible power outages or heavy rains.
DOH spokesperson and Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said big vaccination centers have backup generators, which will also be used to power smaller sites in case of a brownout.
“[They] are ready for these kinds of disasters,” she said.
Regional health authorities were ordered to inspect vaccination sites and storage facilities in their locality to prepare for rotational brownouts and the rainy season, she said.
The Department of Energy has advised authorities to monitor vaccines in storage facilities amid the brownouts.
But Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate committee on energy, raised concern over what outages could do to the vaccine supply, and how they would affect people who work or study from home.
"We have unstable internet connections and now we have unstable power supply,” Gatchalian said.
He said the Senate conducted similar hearings on power shortages in 2016 and 2019.
He said it is crucial for the DOE to provide long-term solutions to this problem and a specific timeline for these plans, to include the hastening of the build out of new power plants, aggressively utilizing energy efficiency and conservation, and contracting sufficient ancillary reserves.