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GOVERNMENT-RUN National Transmission Corp. (Transco)
said Thursday its power delivery to the country
increased by 7.6 percent to 110,234.3 megawatt-months
(MW-months) from 102,454.1 MW-months.
Power
delivery, measured in MW-months, refers to the sum of
Transco’s monthly billing demands (12 months rolling
average) for 2007.
Arthur
N. Aguilar, Transco president and chief executive, said
the recorded power-delivery level last year exceeded
projections by 3.6 percent owing to the increase in
power requirements coming from the franchise area of
Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), Transco’s largest
customer.
Transco
also cited the additional power requirements from other
large utility customers and the entry of new customers.
“To
ensure that customers’ power-delivery demands are met,
we continue to upgrade and expand our transmission
facilities and implement the best practices in operation
and maintenance,” Aguilar said.
Transco’s Corporate Planning Group reported that power
transmitted to the Luzon grid reached 82,404.8
MW-months, a notable 8.1-percent growth from the 2006
level of 76,265.3 MW-months.
Delivery
to the Visayas and
Mindanao grids likewise went up by 7.9 percent and 5 percent, respectively.
In the
Luzon grid, Transco said the demand for power-delivery
service in the Meralco franchise area, which accounts
for 74 percent of the Luzon delivery, increased by
6,210.9 MW-months, or 11.3 percent, when compared with
the 2006 level.
For this
period, Transco said 61.8 percent of Meralco’s billed
demand came from the National Power Corp. (Napocor) and
its independent power producers (IPPs), while the
remaining 38.2 percent was supplied by the three Meralco
IPPs.
Transco
said the Napocor-generated power wheeled by Transco to
Meralco went up by 17.1 percent, or by 5,501.4
MW-months, compared with the 2006 level.
Transco
said that portion of the increase was attributed to the
increase in power supply coming from the Napocor power
plants, which are augmenting the supply of one of
Meralco’s IPPs that stopped operations in August 2006.
Power-delivery service in Luzon outside Meralco’s
franchise area went up by less than 1 percent in 2007.
In the
case of distribution utilities (DUs), while North Luzon
DUs posted positive growths, their counterparts in
South Luzon decreased their power consumption.
Because
of a series of typhoons that hit
South Luzon and disrupted power supply to customers in the latter part
of 2006, power delivery to DUs was almost flat,
registering a total increase of only 1.2 percent, or
just 218.6 MW-months from the 2006 level of 17,809.5
MW-months.
On the
other hand, power-delivery service requirements of
public and private economic zone customers reached
2,013.2 MW-months in 2007, a slight 1.3-percent decrease
from the 2006 level of 2,040.3 MW-months.
The
increase in the operations of Subic Enerzone Corp. and
Baguio City Economic Zone and their corresponding power
delivery growths of 11.5 percent and 9.8 percent,
respectively, helped offset the lost portion of
Transco’s delivery to another customer which started to
draw power from a supplier off the grid in August 2006.
For
nonutility customers, power delivery went up by less
than 1 percent from the 2006 level of 3,106.1 MW-months
due to the lower power demands from Transco’s major
customers in the steel and chemical manufacturing
industries.
In the
Visayas grid power delivery climbed to 12,139.4
MW-months in 2007, up by 7.9 percent over the year-ago
level of 11,247.5 MW-months.
Notable
increases in the consumption of DUs, namely, Visayan
Electric Co., Panay Electric Co., and Central Negros
Electric Cooperative contributed greatly to the overall
growth of demand in the grid. |
