• DOE sets rules penalizing firms for causing power outages

The Department of Energy (DOE) is coming out with rules to penalize power industry players for causing power outages, in a move to unburden consumers from shouldering higher electricity costs.

The agency will issue a causer’s pay policy program on charging incremental cost of electricity to the generator that went on forced outage, DOE Undersecretary Felix William Fuentebella said in his presentation during the 5th Annual Philippines Power & Electricity conference yesterday.

He said this will make generation transmission or distribution companies accountable for causing unwarranted power interruptions instead of passing on the cost to consumers.

“Basically, it’s addressing that level of responsibility to the entire system and more of the accountability portion. Usually, you pass it on to the consumers. We just want to look into how do we look at your responsibility also because you were the one who said that you will be running at this time and then something hap- pens,” Fuentebella said.

Under the proposed policy, the DOE will investigate the technical aspect of the forced outage and identify whether it was triggered or intentional, crime-related, or a result of gross negligence, among others.

Depending on the cause, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) will impose the necessary monetary penalty on the erring power player.

But if the power interruption is proven to be caused by

force majeure, power players will not be held accountable.

A priority in DOE Secretary Alfonso Cusi’s list, the DOE is studying how to implement this policy and issue a department circular hopefully within the year, Fuentebella said.

“It’s a policy that we will look into with the ERC and we will have it tested on players to see the effect to them,” he said.