A Village-Level Power Network for Mindanao
Mike Banos
March 04, 2006
Although there are many matters which merit our attention, perhaps none should have a bigger impact on the economy of Mindanao and the lifestyle of its residents than this shocker from National Transmission Corp. (Transco) District 3 Area Manager Emy Abellanosa.
According to Kuya Bong (as he is known to his numerous alipores in our UCCP Cagayan de Oro City Church) the power crisis in Mindanao remains current and we barely made it through last summer?s El Ni?henomenon. Unknown to many, Transco had to persuade its industrial and other big users to go on voluntary load shedding to avoid plunging Mindanao into rotating brownouts. The buffer was razor thin all summer long and required a lot of acrobatics, shuttling and wheeling from our overstressed Transco execs, Kuya Bong included. Our hats off to you guys for assuring us a brownout-free summer to cope with El Ni?Fabileyoh!
That was the good news. The bad news : despite the new 200MW coal-fired power plant coming online next year, that new power is merely going to cover new demand, so that means our excess power remains razor thin. Pray none of our baseload power plants decide to go on French leave because presto! Instant rotating brownouts for everyone!
So, any new power plants on the pipeline to take up the slack, Kuya Bong? None so far, was his dismal reply. In fact, assuming the DOE demand and supply projections for Mindanao hold true, the island?s power future after 2008 looks black and bleak. To quote Kag. Zaldy Ocon?s favorite expression : Ngitngit pa sa alkitran! (Blacker than Asphalt!) And why is this? Por que? Porque? (Why? Why?)
Seems there?s no takers for big ticket undertakings such as Jimmy Pacampara?s pet Bulanog-Batang hydroelectric project. The national government has taken itself out of the power plant construction business three presidents ago due to its flagging finances, and so with the state-owned National Power Corp. Foreign investors are neither interested due to a quirk in the present power pricing structure in Mindanao: they would have to produce power at a price lower than the present rates to be able to attract users since the hydro power plants ?artificially? lower the island grid?s rate. This means users will always go for the cheaper hydro power and would just begin to buy from them if and when the amount of power they need is more that what our hydro plants can supply. No investor in his right mind, both domestic and foreign, can live with that. So far, the only other power project online I know of is the Aboitiz group?s 40MW hydro plant in Davao scheduled to go online in four years.
So, no national government, no Napocor, no domestic or foreign investor. What?s Mindanao to do?
Being a fan of the Internet, I hope Mindanao can successfully meet this threat to our future economy, well being and lifestyles by setting up a power generation and distribution network similar to it. At present, the Mindanao power grid consists of a number of base load or big, land based hydro, diesel and geothermal power plants which churn out huge amounts of power then distribute or ?wheel? this throughout the island through Transco?s distribution network. They?re often reinforced by power barges that Napocor shuttles from one place to another depending on where the power supply-demand gap is greatest. This model is big, expensive but due to the ?economies of scale? ostensibly lowers power rates to an affordable level. By its very nature, new base load plants for the grid would have to be similarly big, expensive propositions that as we already saw, no one is willing to finance or undertake.
In contrast, the model I?m dreaming about (that?s what many of the corporate bright boys is bound to call it, I betcha!) is similar to the internet which consists of innumerable independent servers which are tied together by software into the global information superhighway. Thus, we?ve seen and experienced how cyberspace is bigger than the sum of its parts.
Instead of big, base load power plants with all their inherent financial, social, environmental and other problems, I?d rather have many small, independent power plants serving the immediate community, which could be a barangay, municipality or a province at most. In this way, total cost is reduced, social and environmental impact is mitigated mostly due to its smaller scale and the fact that the persons who operate it and benefit from it are both within sight of each other.
Compare this to our perennial social and environmental problems with the Agus and Pulangi hydropower systems: residents of the host communities are forever whining of the floods, displaced communities that are the inevitable fall-out from such large-scale projects, and worse, due to the ?economics of scale?, host communities are more often than not ironically without electricity and don?t get their share of royalties from the profits of such power plants (ostensibly meant to develop such localities for hosting such projects and mitigating their social and environment impact).
This network of small, village-level power plants would then be linked by what could best be described using the internet term of ?peer-to-peer?, that is, instead of an expensive power station to step up and step down ?wheeled? power, it will simply be connected to the village-level power plant nearest to it. Such networks may be as small as two power plants or as large as 20, depending on the number of municipalities or towns there are in the immediate political subdivision.
Thus, if one of this village-level plants go down, power can simply be wheeled in from its nearest neighbor and the brownout is limited to the area which hosts the shut down power plant, and not Mindanao wide as what now happens if one baseload plant goes on the blink and trips the entire island grid to ?protect? it from overloads and the like.
I know it?s a quantum leap paradigm shift from what Napocor and Transco in Mindanao now are but say you, Kuya Bong?
INDNJC-
According to Kuya Bong (as he is known to his numerous alipores in our UCCP Cagayan de Oro City Church) the power crisis in Mindanao remains current and we barely made it through last summer?s El Ni?henomenon. Unknown to many, Transco had to persuade its industrial and other big users to go on voluntary load shedding to avoid plunging Mindanao into rotating brownouts. The buffer was razor thin all summer long and required a lot of acrobatics, shuttling and wheeling from our overstressed Transco execs, Kuya Bong included. Our hats off to you guys for assuring us a brownout-free summer to cope with El Ni?Fabileyoh!
That was the good news. The bad news : despite the new 200MW coal-fired power plant coming online next year, that new power is merely going to cover new demand, so that means our excess power remains razor thin. Pray none of our baseload power plants decide to go on French leave because presto! Instant rotating brownouts for everyone!
So, any new power plants on the pipeline to take up the slack, Kuya Bong? None so far, was his dismal reply. In fact, assuming the DOE demand and supply projections for Mindanao hold true, the island?s power future after 2008 looks black and bleak. To quote Kag. Zaldy Ocon?s favorite expression : Ngitngit pa sa alkitran! (Blacker than Asphalt!) And why is this? Por que? Porque? (Why? Why?)
Seems there?s no takers for big ticket undertakings such as Jimmy Pacampara?s pet Bulanog-Batang hydroelectric project. The national government has taken itself out of the power plant construction business three presidents ago due to its flagging finances, and so with the state-owned National Power Corp. Foreign investors are neither interested due to a quirk in the present power pricing structure in Mindanao: they would have to produce power at a price lower than the present rates to be able to attract users since the hydro power plants ?artificially? lower the island grid?s rate. This means users will always go for the cheaper hydro power and would just begin to buy from them if and when the amount of power they need is more that what our hydro plants can supply. No investor in his right mind, both domestic and foreign, can live with that. So far, the only other power project online I know of is the Aboitiz group?s 40MW hydro plant in Davao scheduled to go online in four years.
So, no national government, no Napocor, no domestic or foreign investor. What?s Mindanao to do?
Being a fan of the Internet, I hope Mindanao can successfully meet this threat to our future economy, well being and lifestyles by setting up a power generation and distribution network similar to it. At present, the Mindanao power grid consists of a number of base load or big, land based hydro, diesel and geothermal power plants which churn out huge amounts of power then distribute or ?wheel? this throughout the island through Transco?s distribution network. They?re often reinforced by power barges that Napocor shuttles from one place to another depending on where the power supply-demand gap is greatest. This model is big, expensive but due to the ?economies of scale? ostensibly lowers power rates to an affordable level. By its very nature, new base load plants for the grid would have to be similarly big, expensive propositions that as we already saw, no one is willing to finance or undertake.
In contrast, the model I?m dreaming about (that?s what many of the corporate bright boys is bound to call it, I betcha!) is similar to the internet which consists of innumerable independent servers which are tied together by software into the global information superhighway. Thus, we?ve seen and experienced how cyberspace is bigger than the sum of its parts.
Instead of big, base load power plants with all their inherent financial, social, environmental and other problems, I?d rather have many small, independent power plants serving the immediate community, which could be a barangay, municipality or a province at most. In this way, total cost is reduced, social and environmental impact is mitigated mostly due to its smaller scale and the fact that the persons who operate it and benefit from it are both within sight of each other.
Compare this to our perennial social and environmental problems with the Agus and Pulangi hydropower systems: residents of the host communities are forever whining of the floods, displaced communities that are the inevitable fall-out from such large-scale projects, and worse, due to the ?economics of scale?, host communities are more often than not ironically without electricity and don?t get their share of royalties from the profits of such power plants (ostensibly meant to develop such localities for hosting such projects and mitigating their social and environment impact).
This network of small, village-level power plants would then be linked by what could best be described using the internet term of ?peer-to-peer?, that is, instead of an expensive power station to step up and step down ?wheeled? power, it will simply be connected to the village-level power plant nearest to it. Such networks may be as small as two power plants or as large as 20, depending on the number of municipalities or towns there are in the immediate political subdivision.
Thus, if one of this village-level plants go down, power can simply be wheeled in from its nearest neighbor and the brownout is limited to the area which hosts the shut down power plant, and not Mindanao wide as what now happens if one baseload plant goes on the blink and trips the entire island grid to ?protect? it from overloads and the like.
I know it?s a quantum leap paradigm shift from what Napocor and Transco in Mindanao now are but say you, Kuya Bong?
INDNJC-
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