January 23, 2022
LKI Press Statement 2022-001
Points to Highlight re NGCP warning of thin reserves of power.
No power rate hike and no rotational brownouts.
• Anticipating tight power supply during the summer months is given. This is something that happens every year.
• In fact last year, despite assurances we got from the DOE, customers experienced rotating power interruptions and that’s because of lack of sufficient supply and reserves.
• There’s a possibility that this can happen again because there were no new big capacities that were added to the available supply.
• And now it’s only January and the Luzon grid was already placed on yellow alert twice even when demand was just over 8,000 MW.
• There were more than 2,000 MW power plant capacity unavailable at a time when demand is low.
• Once we hit that 12,000MW peak demand expected by DOE, we can expect a similar situation, or worse, red alerts.
• The problem we keep on seeing is unscheduled power outages. In paper, we have enough supply, but that forecast only considers scheduled and preventive maintenance shutdowns.
• The DOE and ERC should look at that and also be more proactive in monitoring the possibility of extended maintenance shutdowns of power plants because these also contribute to the supply problem.
• They should also do something about the persisting derated capacity issue of some power plants.
• At this point, instead of pointing fingers, the industry players should work together to make sure that this issue on thin power supply will be addressed the soonest possible time because we need a real assurance especially since stable and sufficient power supply is crucial for the upcoming elections.