(Eagle News) — Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Friday, April 12, wants to probe why there have been rotating brownouts in the country, even if the Department of Energy gave a previous assurance there was enough energy supply.
In an interview over GMA’s News to Go, Gatchalian, chair of the Senate’s committee on energy, said the probe would focus on why there was a lack of reserves and why different power plants bogged down at the same time.
The DOE had said the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines hoisted a red and yellow alert over the Luzon grid on Friday, April 12, because of “major generation inadequacy” following the “recent unplanned outage” of the San Miguel Consolidated Power Corp. Unit 2.
The DOE said this added to the already existing unplanned outages of the Sual Unit I of Team Energy and San Miguel; the Southwest Luzon Power Generation Corp. Unit 2 of DMCI; Pagbilao Unit 3 of Team Energy and Aboitiz Power and the South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp. Unit 1 of Ayala.
“Moreover, additional losses of MW were due to the following: the de-rated capacity of DMCI’s Calaca Unit 2 and 827 MW from previously approved outages due to scheduled maintenance,” the DOE had said.
Although Gatchalian stopped short of saying there was an artificial shortage of power, what was clear was that “manipis ang ating reserba, manipis ang supply kaya madali imanipula ang merkado ng kuryente. ”
He said the DOE, for its part, should give the assurance that there would be enough electricity in the days to come, especially during the elections, which are already fully automated.
“Dapat itong pagbrownout ay dapat di nangyayari dahil matagal nang nagpaplan ang DOE at sila nagaassure na may tuloy tuloy na supply na kuryente sa ating bansa. Nung nagkaroon kaming hearing two weeks ago, inassure kami na may sapat na kuryente next week at sa eleksyon..kaya nagulat kami nagkaroon kami ng rotating brownouts…,” he said.
“Titignan ho natin lahat ito,” he added.
The NGCP announced on Friday that the red alert over the Luzon grid on Friday would be in place from 9:01 a.m. to 10 p.m., and the yellow alert from 8:01 a.m to 9 a.m., and from 10:01 p.m. to 11 p.m.
A red alert means there exists a generation deficiency.
A yellow alert, on the other hand, means the reserves are less than the capacity of the biggest plant online.
The NGCP also hoisted the same alerts over the same grid the day before and on Wednesday.