Mindanao Power Outlook for summer grim

The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) confirmed Tuesday (Feb. 9) the power outlook for Mindanao in the next five months would be grim with rotating brownouts all over the island.

Engr. Emmanuel Abellanosa, NGCP assistant vice president for operations and maintenance, confirmed Mindanao has been suffering from rotating brownouts for several days now due to a confluence of factors including the regular maintenance and forced outages of some power plants.

"The supply side has not been coming in as expected," Abellanosa said during a forum on the Mindanao Power Outlook held Tuesday, May 9 at a local hotel and hosted by the Oro Chamber with the Cagayan de Oro Chamber of Industries (COCI) and PIE-MO Industries Association (PIA). "We are left with no alternative but load curtailment to districts and customers."

Figures presented by Engr. Eugene Bicar, NGCP Head for Systems Operations-Mindanao show the reserve level in Mindanao plunging to a low of 232 megawatts (MW) this month and continuing until June this year when Pag-ASA forecasts the start of the rainy season and the regulating and contingency reserves of the National Power Corporation (Napocor) returns to positive.

To immediately address the power shortage in the short term, the forum participants agreed to adopt some measures presented by NGCP such as sending a joint resolution to the National Power Corporation (NPC) and the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) signed by the Oro Chamber, COCI and PIA.

Among the measures advocated by the resolution would be to speed up the repair of Agus 5 hydroelectric plant and activate the Iligan Diesel Power Plant in Iligan City. These would immediately make available some 80MW to the Mindanao grid.

The resolution would also advocate for the sharing of excess power to be made available by embedded power plants of industries through NGCP and dialogue with PSALM to conduct a series of info and education fora for demand-side management.

To address the expected power deficit in Mindanao over the long term, the Oro Chamber is mulling to conduct a Mindanao Power Investors´ Forum in August and adopt power load shifting and energy conservation in the interim, especially among industries which constitute the biggest sectoral power consumers in the island.

"We are not here to pin blame on anyone but rather to find solutions we can do together," stressed Ralph Paguio, Oro Chamber president. "We believe we in Mindanao can find the best solutions to address our problems.

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