Newly-designated Chairperson of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) is advocating for "exchange programs" with peers in the Southeast Asian region, so the country could elevate its level of regulations in the power industry to higher standards.
In her assumption of office at the ERC’s helm, Atty Monalisa C. Dimalanta expressed her vision of turning ERC into a “center of excellence not only in the Philippines but in the ASEAN region.”
On that goal then, she persuaded the employees and her co-officials at the ERC that “this requires an opening up of the agency to new, better and other ways of crafting and enforcing regulations.”
The ERC chief emphasized “we can do exchange programs with other regulators in the region so that they can learn from us, and we can learn from them.”
While traversing such transformative pathway of regulating the restructured power sector, she indicated that the ERC “will carry a badge of professionalism and unmatched understanding of the energy industry.”
Just this week, the ERC had been the subject of verbal assault in Congress – with some lawmakers proposing that the regulatory body be extended with a ‘zero budget’ or it shall be abolished for failing to perform its mandate of providing lower electricity rates for the Filipino consumers.
Apart from the proverbial clamor of consumers for cheaper power rates, there are also array of menacing problems awaiting urgent and conclusive actions from the ERC – including the pending petitions for cost recoveries on power supply agreements (PSAs); fixing power supply issues not just in the main grid of Luzon but also in the service domains of the electric cooperatives (ECs) as well as in off-grid areas.
The other major concerns that the ERC must focus on would be the massive-scale integration of renewable energy (RE) capacities and ensuring that this will not result in wastage of generated capacity similar to what is happening in Vietnam, hence, the Commission will need to ensure harmonized buildup of transmission and power generation facilities.
Within the precarious months of summer, the ERC will also need to keep closer watch on the habitually delinquent power plants that had been straining supply availability because of recurring forced outages of their generating units -- that at times, had been flipping the grid into unwanted power interruptions or rotational brownouts.
Despite the uphill battle laid upon ERC’s shoulders in the problematic power industry, Dimalanta has been encouraging people at the Commission to “embark on a transformational journey towards being the country’s most trusted government agency,” with her stressing that “respect should always be the baseline in all its dealings.”
She further noted “we need to respect the work that is entrusted to us; we need to respect the institution that we represent.”
Dimalanta similarly apprised employees that “this respect should beget accountability within ERC to serve the consumers and the industry.”