As thin power supply predicaments had already been raised during the summer months, a lawmaker sounded off fears that the occurrence of rotational blackouts could distort poll results during the May 9 national elections.
House Deputy Minority Leader and Bayan Muna Representative Carlos Isagani Zarate described as "worrisome" the declaration of system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) on probabilities of thin power supply. With that, he urged that concrete actions and feasible planning must be required from the Department of Energy.
"Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi claimed they have already devised plans to prevent brownouts during the elections, but, apparently this is not what is happening in reality,” the solon stressed.
He emphasized that on top of the very lean reserve margin anticipated for the Luzon grid within April-June period, adding to the dilemma of the power system is the fact that electricity supply in typhoon-battered areas in Visayas and Mindanao had yet to be fully restored.
Zarate further noted “this is serious as it is smack right in the middle of the election period. Added to that are the yellow alerts due to forced plant shutdowns, which already occurred last January 10 and 11.”
When asked on the "thin supply warning" for Luzon, the energy department indicated that it will account first if the required volume of power reserves had already been contracted by the system operator.
On the part of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), Commissioner Floresinda B. Digal conveyed that NGCP “filed firm contracts for reserves for our approval,” although the industry regulator has yet to reckon the actual reserve capacity that had already been procured.
Zarate similarly asserted that “despite Secretary Cusi’s statements, a stable power situation during the elections is still a question,” with him adding that “these doubts linger given that Secretary Cusi is also the head of a ruling party that appeared to be gravely sidelined in the coming elections.”
The lawmaker thus appealed to the public that “we should be very vigilant against devious schemes that could affect the elections as the future of our country is at stake here. Certainly, in a crucial election like this, there are those - as in the past - who would want to undermine the will of the people.”
Relative to the wobbly power supply situation, there are also aggravating factors that will grimly affect electricity services in the coming months – and such include the uncertainty of coal supply from Indonesia, gas restriction from the Malampaya field and the recurrent forced outages of power plants.
Historically, it has been the unplanned outages of generating facilities that had been triggering either yellow alerts (insufficiency of power reserves) or red alert conditions in the power grid - that at times had instigated rotational blackouts, especially in the Luzon power system. ###