ILP not a guaranteed solution to brownouts
The Department of Energy (DOE) has not totally pulled the plug on its preferred option of leasing or purchasing generating sets (gensets) from offshore suppliers, as Secretary Carlos Jericho L. Petilla is now sounding off that resorting to the interruptible load program (ILP) may not be a full-proof solution to feared rotating brownouts.
Petilla stressed “the ILP is voluntary in nature, hence, it does not promise a zero-brownout,” expounding that based on the current ILP protocol, “the program will be implemented the moment red alert hits.”
In the electricity sector’s jargon, a “red alert” condition in the system is the phase when rotating brownouts already struck – and that’s the time when the capacities of the ILP participants will be called upon for dispatch into the grid by system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines.
While professing that the energy department has been exerting various efforts to help beef up supply on next year’s summer months, Petilla noted that the entire exercise “is a shared effort of both public and private sectors.”
For some time, the DOE had been at odds with the industry’s private sector players and even some members of Congress because of questions raised on its power supply outlook as well as on its proposed short-term fixes.
Nevertheless, the DOE
claimed that it “continuous (sic-incomprehensible) extensive use of existing measures and methods to safeguard the supply of energy next summer.”
The department further noted that “the Secretary has been hands-on in the promotion and monitoring of potential ILP participants.”
Tapping self-generating facilities (SGFs) for the ILP alternative now takes the core of the solutions that will likely spare Luzon grid from rotating power outages on the peak demand months of summer.
This will be incorporated in the Joint Resolution to be issued by Congress setting imprimatur for President Aquino to invoke Section 71 of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) or government’s intervention in establishing additional power capacity for a crisis- laden grid.
According to House committee on energy chairman Reynaldo V. Umali, the ILP option sets forth that there shall be “reimbursement of fuel expenses and reasonable recovery for the use (of gensets) as may be determined and validated by the DOE.”
The dispatch protocol as well as scheduling and grid synchronization of self-generation facilities shall also be managed by the department with the aid of system operator NGCP.
The energy department similarly propounded that the call on additional capacities, including those from the SGFs, “shall be made only during critical supply situations (March to July 2015) such as yellow alert or analogous circumstances as determined by the DOE.”