Philippine Energy Plan won’t ensure security
The Philippine Electric Power Industry Forum (PEPIF) 2024 with the theme “Powering a sustainable and secure energy future for the country” held at the Iloilo Convention Center on April 5 was a great success. Audience-packed, information-loaded and networking-rich, it was sponsored by the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP). Congratulations, IEMOP.
The opening remarks were given by Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas. It was a warm, friendly and challenging message. Warm because he thanked the participants from Metro Manila and other provinces for flying to Iloilo and spending their money there. Challenging because he narrated the huge inconvenience of power blackouts the city and the entire province of Panay and four other provinces suffered in early January and early March, and the need for big power supply given the huge demand from many existing and potential investors and consumers in the province and island.
Energy Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla could not come but he gave an inspirational keynote message explaining the need for energy security to help attain economic security. His message was delivered and read by Energy Undersecretary Rowena Guevara. The overall roadmap as contained in the Philippine Energy Plan (PEP) until 2050 and National Renewable Energy Program (NREP) was ably presented by Energy Assistant Secretary Mylene Capongcol.
Other information-packed presentations came from the Energy Regulatory Commission, National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, National Transmission Corp., National Electrification Administration, private players Aboitiz Renewables, Inc. and MORE Power in Iloilo City.
In this column last Tuesday, I made an estimate and forecast of how much new power generation the Philippines should have given the high GDP growth targets set by the economic team — 6-7% for 2024, 6.5-7.5% for 2025 and 6.5-8% for 2026-2028 and avoid blackout.
This piece will attempt to quantify the projected power generation from 2023-2028 given the new committed projects and compare it with the projected needs of the country over the same period.
From a total installed capacity of 28,258 megawatts (MW) in 2022, about 3,193 MW are expected to become operational this year and 2,624 MW next year, for a total of 9,968 MW from 2023-2028 (Table 1).
As mentioned in my previous article, not all megawatts are the same. Conventional thermal power plants have higher energy density, reliability and capacity factor (CF) per MW than conventional renewables such as hydro and geothermal energy, and intermittent renewables such as solar, wind and biomass.
Since not all new power plants committed for the year will start operating in January — some may not start until the fourth quarter — I adjusted the CF to 95% of the actual CF 2017-2022 as measured by IEMOP. My computation of additional generation in gigawatthours (GWh) is derived using this formula: (CF 2023-2028) x (committed projects) x (24 hours/day) x (365 days/year). My results show an additional 12,263 GWh or 12.26 terawatt-hours (TWh) this year and 10 TWh in 2028 (Table 2).