BusinessMirror
www.businessmirror.com.ph
A broader look at today’s business n
Saturday, May 27, 2023 Vol. 18 No. 222
EJAP JOURNALISM AWARDS
BUSINESS NEWS SOURCE OF THE YEAR
(2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021) DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
2018 BANTOG MEDIA AWARDS
P25.00 nationwide | 18 pages | 7 DAYS A WEEK
‘N
By Lenie Lectura
HOW DOES ELECTRICITY GET TO YOU?
OT our fault.” In so many words, representatives of the country’s power generation, transmission and distribution sectors declared separately that they are not to be blamed for the recent power outages that hit Luzon and Visayas. The rotational power inter ruption on May 8 lasted for only one to two hours in the franchise areas of the Manila Electric Com pany (Meralco). If it had lasted for five hours, this may have resulted in about P556 million in economic losses, according to Philippine In dependent Power Producers Asso ciation Inc. (Pippa) President Anne Estorco Montelibano. In a recent webinar organized by the Philippine Institute for De velopment Studies (PIDS), she ex plained that the economic conse quences of a power interruption is measured by the value of lost load (VoLL) or “the monetary indicator expressing the costs of interrup tion of electricity supply on a mac ro level.” “In 2020, the country’s VoLL was at P20.65 per kilowatt hour (kWh). To put this into perspective, for every five hours of no electricity, our country loses about 500 mega watts (MW), which equates to P556 million in economic losses. It’s a hefty amount to lose for a develop ing country,” said Montelibano.
Who’s at fault?
HOWEVER, the power outages in the Visayas last month lasted more than five hours, according to the power bureau of the De partment of Energy (DOE), sig nificantly crippling businesses and government services. After the power mess, blame
was heaped on the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP). “The recent prolonged power outages in Panay and Negros, and the power interruption experi enced yesterday [May 8] have been traced principally to inadequacies in the transmission system,” a statement from the office of DOE Secretary Raphael Lotilla dated May 9 said. NGCP’s Bolo-Masinloc 230-kV transmission line 2 tripped on May 8. Thereafter, two units (630MW) of Masinloc power plant tripped. Together with other units already on forced outage, total power lost to the grid was 1,354MW. “The generators tripped be cause the line tripped. It was the transmission line that tripped first, followed by the Masinloc trip ping,” commented DOE Undersec retary Rowena Guevara. The NGCP initially told the DOE that heavy rains and a light ning strike on its Bolo-Masinloc transmission Line 2 caused it to trip. With a “redundancy” in place, the load carried by Line 2 was au tomatically transferred to Line 1. NGCP said each of the lines is more than capable of singularly carrying the entire load of the Bolo-Masin loc facility at any time. However, NGCP said the tripping of two Ma sinloc units was both unexpected and undesirable. A group of 28 generator mem
HENDRAXAVERIUS | DREAMSTIME.COM
THE POWER BLAME GAME GENERATION
bers said it agrees with the findings of the DOE. “The Pippa agrees with the find ings of the DOE and we look forward to the completion and improve ment of transmission line facili ties in order to mitigate the effects caused about by line tripping,” Montelibano said as she stressed that these incidents were not the fault of the power generators. Pippa, she said, has repeatedly emphasized the need to address transmission lines issues. “Our main highways [of elec tricity] first need to improve, so when they traverse our local grids, energy delivery also improves. From Luzon to Visayas and vice versa, the lines are utterly congest ed. Undersecretary Guevara has said that without the congestion of the transmission lines, we may see a vast improvement and a decrease in power interruptions,” Monte libano recalled.
Holistic approach
NGCP, for its part, brushed off in sinuations that the grid operator is solely to be blamed for the power deficiency. Most importantly, the NGCP stressed the need for a ho listic approach to power planning. “I do not believe that the pur pose of the public statements is to as
TRANSMISSION
sign blame. The electricity industry is interconnected and our operations are naturally affected by what the other sectors do,” said NGCP spokes person Atty. Cynthia Alabanza. More important, NGCP em phasized that protection settings of its customers connected to its system must remain consistent with its protection settings and other grid parameters. “We have to coordinate with power plants if their settings are consistent with us. It has to be con sistent with the settings submitted and tested by NGCP at the time they were connected. Everyone’s settings have to be consistent with each other. We are three here: gen eration, transmission and distri bution. Otherwise, there will really be inconsistencies and avoidable interruptions,” Alabanza said. NGCP has caught the ire of some lawmakers whenever brown outs occur; and when these happen they threaten to revoke its fran chise, citing poor performance— even a security risk amid increas ing maritime tensions between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea. NGCP is 60-percent owned by Filipino companies Monte Oro Grid Resources Corp. and Calaca High Power Corp., while the remaining 40
DISTRIBUTION
percent shares are held by the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC).
The China factor
CONCERNS have been raised about the SGCC’s stake in NGCP, i.e., that it may mean a foreign en tity has control over NGCP.
NGCP said SGCC’s stake can not and does not amount to control of the company because Filipinos own 60 percent of NGCP. Control over the company is vested in the Filipino shareholders, as envi sioned by the Constitution. Continued on A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 55.9160 n JAPAN 0.3992 n UK 68.9277 n HK 7.1369 n CHINA 7.8983 n SINGAPORE 41.2999 n AUSTRALIA 36.3789 n EU 59.9923 n KOREA 0.0420 n SAUDI ARABIA 14.9113 Source: BSP (May 26, 2023)
BLUERINGMEDIA | DREAMSTIME.COM
ROTARY CLUB OF MANILA JOURNALISM AWARDS
2006 National Newspaper of the Year 2011 National Newspaper of the Year 2013 Business Newspaper of the Year 2017 Business Newspaper of the Year 2019 Business Newspaper of the Year 2021 Pro Patria Award PHILIPPINE STATISTICS AUTHORITY 2018 Data Champion