Consumer Group- power rate hikes and rolling brown outs loom this summer

The long delayed publication and release of the 2021 to 2023 Grid Operating and Maintenance Program or GOMP was uploaded on April 21, 2021 in website of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines ( NGCP) and the Department of Energy ( DOE ) . The GOMP should have been issued in October 2020.Because of the long delay, there are not much time meaningful for the stakeholders to prepare for the coming red and yellow alerts .

The 2021 Weekly Demand, Supply and Reserve Profile as of April 15, 2021 shows three ( 3 ) Red Alerts and ( 5 ) Yellow Alerts for the summer months April, May and June . One plant that trips during a yellow alert will cause rolling brownouts in the affected areas. Red Alerts mean rolling brownouts in the affected service areas .

The red Alerts are the periods April 23 to 29, May 28 to June 3 and June 4 to 10.

The yellow alerts are the periods April 16 to 22, April 30 to May 6,May 7 to 13 and June 11 to 17.

In addition to the yellow and red Alerts , Vic Dimagiba , LKI President said per DOE Circular No. 2020-02-0004 ,there should be no maintenance schedule during peak quarter. But you have to look at the charts for Luzon, and the power situation does not look good as April, May and June have planned outages, whether unplanned, original and revised schedules .There are too many power plant outages being projected for the coming weeks and months and this situation will heavily burdened consumers thru higher generation charges .

In an earlier separate press statement, Meralco said spot market prices increased by Php 2.5991 per kwh for the April billing month .

Dimagiba said in a recent interview with media that “when supply of power is lacking, the prices in the spot market go up increasingly, and distribution utilities are forced to get their sourcing from spot market with high generation costs that will burden the consumers.”.

Dimagiba summarized the plant outages , whether unplanned , original and revised schedule of the Power Supply and Demand for the peak quarter as follows :

-BCF Unit 1 300 MW March 31 to April 7

-Sual Unit 1 647 MW, April 7 to April 30

-SBPL, 506 MW, April 3 to April 27

-Limay PH 1 ,150 MW, Feb 26 to April 1

-GN Power 36 MW ,March 1 to May 23

Petron 36 MW , Unit 3 , May 1 to May 26

-Pagbilao 382 MW, June 12 to July 11

Petron Units 1 to 4, 36 MW each , June 1 to 7
SLPGC, Unit 1, 150 MW, June 15 to July 30

-SLPGC, Unit 2 ,150 MW , June 1 to July 15

Limay , PH 1 ,150 MW June 15 to June 30
Limay ,PH 3, 150 MW, June 15 to June 30

-Malaya ,350MW June 1 to June 30

Dimagiba noted that transmission facilities nationwide have almost negligible or isolated maintenance schedule in the summer months .

Dimagiba calls on the DOE to strictly implement the GOMP rule of zero plant maintenance for the peak quarter . The spot market operator should immediately spot any irregular price spikes in the market and use their powers to investigate and impose sanctions on erring plant owners . Consumers can contribute in the use of energy efficiently and judiciously .

Consumer Group- power rate hikes and rolling brown outs loom this summer

Leave a Reply