Data: Power supply in city short by 9MW

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

AN independent power producer based in Iloilo City said it was never remiss in delivering electricity to Panay Electric Co. (PECO), the sole power distributor in the city.

Engr. Adrian N. Moncada, assistant vice president of Global Business Power Corp. (GBPC), said they kept their part of the power purchase agreement with PECO.

GBPC owns Panay Power Corp. (PPC) which operates a 72-megawatt diesel-fired power plant, currently the main source of Iloilo City’s electricity.

Based on data from GBPC and PECO, Iloilo City’s demand for electricity peaks at 78MW between 10am to 7pm daily.

Presently, PPC has an existing contract with PECO to supply 69MW of electricity on a daily basis, thus the city is suffering from a deficit of 9MW daily. This deficit has resulted in daily rotating brownouts in Iloilo City sometimes for over two hours.

Moncada said PPC’s contract with PECO requires them to deliver 31 million kilowatt-hour of electricity daily to Iloilo City.

“In reality, we are delivering 32 million to 36 million of electricity to PECO, thus we even went beyond our contractual obligation,” he said.

Under the same contract, PPC is allowed a 5% downtown period of its operation for the entire year for scheduled maintenance works or emergency cases.

“On the average, our downtown or shutdown period is only 1% of our operations for the entire year. We kept our part of the contract,” Moncada said.

A cause-oriented group called Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) recently slammed the brownouts as a “drama” to highlight the necessity of using the coal-fired power plant which will be operated by another GBPC subsidiary, Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC).

It also hit PECO for terminating its supply contract with state-owned National Power Corp. (NPC) to draw 15MW from the Visayas grid.

The group said the brownouts can be cured by augmenting the city’s supply from another diesel plant of PPC (which was formerly called Avon River Holdings Corp.), which is now known as PPC2.

The group also batted for the installation of another submarine cable between Panay and Negros so that the city can draw power from the Palimpinon geothermal plant.

Moncada said the real cause of brownouts in the city is the lack of capacity or sources of electricity in Iloilo City and Panay.

Moncada said PPC2 has been committed to Iloilo Electric Cooperative (Ileco 1) in Iloilo province.

Even if PPC2 supplies power to PECO, it will still be not enough and brownouts will still occur between 12 noon to 5pm.

“The contract between PECO and PPC2, if ever there is one, would be non-firm, which means that electricity will only be supplied from PPC 2 when available. We cannot renege on our contract with Ileco 1 because that unit is committed to the cooperative,” he said.

Moncada said PECO’s contract with NPC was also a non-firm deal with no assurance that the city can draw electricity from the Visayas grid during peak periods.

Even if NPC supplies PECO, the city still cannot meet the legal requirement for power reserves which can be used when emergency situation arises.

Under the law, a power distributor must have electricity reserves amounting to 23% of its peak load. The reserve can also be drawn from the highest capacity plant in the area. In the case of Iloilo City, PECO needs 18MW for its reserves.

The Visayas grid is also an unreliable source because it is saddled with deficits.

Based on data from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) as of November 11, Visayas’s demand peaked at 1,276MW but the available capacity is only 1,144MW, thus a deficit of 132MW.

NPC eventually terminated its contract with PECO for lack of sources after its assets in Visayas were privatized as mandated by the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira).

The cause-oriented group has been claiming that they were responsible for forcing PECO to draw power from NPC to augment the city’s supply.

Moncada said if the group was indeed responsible for the PECO-NPC contract, “then their solution is not sustainable.”

“The more sustainable solution is to put up more capacities in our area so we can have a wide range of sources. The present sources are already untenable because the city’s demand is growing with the numerous businesses and buildings sprouting around us,” he said.

At the height of the coal debate several years back, FDC assured the public that there is enough power supply for Panay Island.

Brownouts are not only occurring in Iloilo City but also in the entire island of Panay and Negros because of power shortage in the Cebu-Negros-Panay grid.