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STAKEHOLDERS have sounded the alarm for a looming power
shortage in the Visayas, which could result in regular
brownouts as early as the third quarter of 2008.
“It
looks bleak. Those of you who have generator sets at
home or in the office, you may start cleaning them now
because we might need them by the third quarter,”
Crispin Lamayan, National Transmission Corp. assistant
vice president for the Visayas, said.
“We may
have problems when one of the big power plants shut
down,” he told members of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce
and Industry.
Lamayan
said increasing power demand, pushed by the growing
economy in the Visayas and the aging of existing power
plants, will result in a shortage of some 128 megawatts
(MW) of power in the Cebu-Negros-Panay grid by the end
of the year.
The
Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) also projected that demand
for power in their franchise area may surpass their
contracted supply by September 2008.
According to Ricardo Pardillo, project procurement and
regulatory affairs manager of Veco, they project a
shortage of some 5.3 MW in September 2008, a figure set
to increase to a 15.48 MW shortage by 2009.
Veco,
which services Metro Cebu, estimates that by 2010, their
existing power-supply contracts could no longer meet the
demand for their whole franchise area the whole year
round.
“In
2008, we can still hold the situation except September.
But the situation is still manageable. It’s 2009 and
2010 that is a big problem,” Pardillo said.
Lamayan,
however, said they have identified several solutions,
among them the improvement of the efficiency of the
“power factor” in the CNP grid.
The
improvement of distribution lines could increase the
power from the Leyte geothermal fields to the CNP grid
from the present 360 MW to around 370 MW to 380 MW.
Leyte is
connected to the CNP grid through submarine power
cables.
This
could also allow CNP to get power from
Luzon, through the Leyte-Luzon connection.
Transco
is also persuading the National Power Corp. to bring a
power barge from Davao to Panay island to augment the
power situation there.
Another
proposal is for the long-overdue Wholesale Electricity
Spot Market (WESM) to finally go on line.
“There
are businesses who are very willing to pay expensive
power just to prevent brownouts,” he said.
Veco is
also pushing for the approval of its Time of Use (TOU)
rate mechanism by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC)
to encourage industries to shift their work schedule to
off-peak hours when there is less demand for power,
translating to cheaper rates.
Roger
Lim, general manager of independent power producer (IPP)
Cebu Private Power Corp., said the projected power
shortage could easily be solved with WESM.
“There
are a lot of power plants who do not operate to their
full capacity simply because it is not economically
sound,” he said.
“All the
IPP contracts are based on the NPC price, which is not
reflective of the true cost to produce power.”
With
WESM, Lim said power plants like this can sell their
capacity, especially during peak hours at fair prices.
“APO
[Cement Corp. in Naga City, Cebu] has an installed
capacity of 60- megawatts [MW] but they only use 15 MW;
I’m sure they would be willing to sell their excess
power at a fair price,” he said, adding CPPC alone can
produce a few more MW if power rates become fair.
Lim said
the fears that prices will shoot up with WESM is
unfounded because majority of the power supply contracts
in the grid are already covered by bilateral contracts
between distributors like Veco and power suppliers, thus
the contracted power price is protected.
The CNP
grid consumes around 900 MW of power at its peak, with
Veco eating up close to 350 MW.
The
power shortage is expected to be solved by the operation
of the 246-MW plant of the Cebu Energy Development Corp.
in Toledo City by the first half of 2010.
The
200-MW Kepco Salcon Po-wer Corp. is also set to go
online by 2011. |
