‘ENERGY CRUNCH IN SUMMER COULD IMPERIL MAY POLLS’

A CLIMATE and energy policy group has warned that an impending electricity shortfall this summer would “undermine the credibility of the elections” in May.

The Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC) anticipates 1,335 megawatt (MW) deficit in the country’s electricity supply during peak demand, leading to a red alert status and possible blackouts over the Luzon grid in the second quarter of 2022.

“Unreliable electricity supply would undermine the credibility of the elections. We need our electrical power system to provide reliable supply especially during election day and while transmitting data; otherwise our political power system might fail if the results are not accepted by our people,” said Atty. Pedro Maniego Jr., ICSC senior policy advisor.

The Department of Energy (DOE) earlier said that the Luzon power grid might experience two instances of red alert and four yellow alerts in May. This is likely to happen based on historical events such as unscheduled forced outages of power plants.

“We ran simulations, we averaged the events that happened and what are the possibilities if we consider the forced outages and our basis is the last three years of average, we will have red alert after the election,” Mario Marasigan, director of the DOE Power Bureau, said earlier.

A red alert status, which could trigger brownouts, is issued when supplies are insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement.

A yellow alert is issued when the excess power is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s regulating and contingency requirement, pegged at the time at about 495 MW and 647 MW, respectively.

ICSC said the projections of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) of thinning operating reserves in the two-week period before (April 18-May 1) and after (May 16-29) this year’s elections is already the most optimistic scenario, and is far from ideal because this projection does not account for the potential unplanned outages of coal power plants.

“Grid alert levels after unplanned outages of a few baseload plants show how vulnerable the power system can be to centralized generators. We experience rotating blackouts while still paying for high electricity costs.