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GOVERNMENT-RUN National Power Corp. (Napocor) said
Friday that more than 100 barangays on different islands
of the country were given access to electricity by the
Napocor-Small Power Utilities Group (SPUG) under its
Electrification of 100 Barangays program and part of its
mandate to provide electricity to off-grid islands
through missionary electrification.
SPUG
vice president Lorenzo S. Marcelo said the completion of
the project, with the energization of 1,550 households
in 38 barangays in Northern Samar and Antique, and the
completion of the 48.85 circuit-kilometer, 69-kilovolt
Mobo-Aroroy transmission line in Masbate.
“This
project is just one of many Napocor-SPUG has in the
pipeline to fulfill our mandate of providing electricity
to the remotest islands in the country, as well as the
government’s promise to make electricity available where
and when it is needed, at affordable rates,” he said.
Marcelo
added that given that power markets are now driven by
competition, the challenge for Napocor-SPUG begins only
in assuring the electrification of the off-grid small
island areas, but more significantly, to transform them
into viable enterprises for private investment.
“SPUG
today faces the challenge of meeting the continuing rise
in demand, addressing this in terms of capacity buildup,
system upgrading, heat-rate improvement, and increase in
daily service hours for smaller islands,” Marcelo said.
SPUG
also built and operates 69-kilovolt transmission line
systems, including power substations in five major
island provinces in Luzon.
To date,
SPUG has 775 circuit-kilometers of 69-kilovolt
transmission lines and an aggregate substation capacity
of 141 megavolt-ampere. Programmed expansions on the
69-kilovolt systems include 355 circuit-kilometers of
transmission lines and 85 megavolt-ampere combined
substation capacity.
Created
in 1988, according to Napocor, SPUG was organized to
provide adequate electricity at subsidized rates to
off-grid islands and isolated municipalities in the
Philippines, hinged on the concept that affordable
electricity rates would pump-prime the local economy and
thus improve the standard of living on the islands.
SPUG
provides integrated services to these off-grid
missionary areas, from power generation to power
transmission, covering 77 areas all over the
archipelago.
In 2005,
the Department of Energy (DOE), through a circular, has
mandated the privatization of 14 areas under SPUG to
help boost economic activity.
As a
result of this program, SPUG has so far turned over five
island-provinces to private entities such as Power One
Corp. in Oriental Mindoro, Catanduanes, and Southern
Palawan; Bantayan Island Power Corp. on Bantayan Island,
Cebu; and D.M. Consunji Holdings Inc. in Masbate, which
brings to eight the number of missionary electrification
areas that have been privatized, or more than half of
the 14 first-wave areas for privatization that were
earlier identified. |
