New Transco president named

Famed for gaining his expertise and solid experience as a power industry veteran and former executive of the country’s biggest power distribution utility Manila Electric Company, Engineer Fortunato C. Leynes has been designated under the Marcos administration as the new president and CEO of staterun National Transmission Corporation (Transco) via an election process carried out by its board.

In assuming the company’s top post, Leynes cited the confidence and trust that Energy Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla and the Transco Board had bestowed on him, while promising that he will reciprocate that by “bringing Transco to new heights with the best of my ability.”

He narrated that “when the job was offered to me, it was for the nation. It is really for the good and welfare of the electric power industry and, eventually, the whole country as well.”

While Leynes may not exactly come as a savior of an already-messy and politically charged industry, the new Transco president is hoping that he can pitch in valuable contribution that could help improve the restructured power sector.

Transco is the duly sanctioned owner of the country’s power transmission facilities—of which operation and management is currently under a 25-year

concession arrangement with private firm National Grid Corporation of the Philippines.

The state-run firm is also performing a critical role in managing the trust fund being utilized to compensate and incentivize the qualified renewable energy (RE) developers—primarily those that had been granted with feed-in-tariff (FIT) incentives as well as the longterm power supply agreements (PSAS) awarded via the Green Energy Auction (GEA) program being administered by the Department of Energy.

Another prospective role that Transco will be taking on would be the planned “parallel grid” or the “Smart and Green Grid System” that the DOE has been advancing to support easier integration of renewable energy (RE) projects into the grid.