NGCP's failure to expand power grid enough reason to revoke franchise—Villafuerte

Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte has asserted that the failure of National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) to expand and upgrade the country’s power grid is “reason enough for the Congress to consider recasting, if not revoking, its franchise”.

In a statement on Saturday, Jan. 13, Villafuerte said the NGCP has 37 unfinished transmission projects under its Transmission Development Plan (TDP). These projects were meant to enhance the national power grid’s capacity.

“The concessionaire’s blunder of this magnitude, its extraordinary ineptitude in finishing vital transmission lines on time as set in its TDP, is reason enough for us lawmakers to take a look at recasting its franchise, if not cancelling it in favor of a new, more competent system operator, should the Congress want to ensure stable electricity supply and avert widespread blackouts from happening again in the future,” the lawmaker said.

Among these unfinished TDP projects is the 230-kilovolt Cebu-Negros-Panay (CNP) Stage 3 backbone project, which the NGCP originally promised to finish by August 2023 to strengthen the Panay grid.

“The August 2023 completion of this CNP 3 transmission backbone, which the NGCP had promised regulators to accomplish after a similar subsystem collapse caused widespread power failure also in Western Visayas in April last year, would have prevented a repeat of the summer blackout in the region a day after New Year’s Day festivities,” the National Unity Party (NUP) president explained.

Villafuerte pointed out that the non-completion caused the NGCP to fail in stabilizing power by sourcing electricity elsewhere in the grid after six power plants in Iloilo tripped one after the other in the afternoon of Jan. 2.

This would then caused a subsystem collapse that isolated Panay Island from the rest of the national grid and triggered a blackout that lasted for three days until the afternoon of Jan. 5.

Data from the Department of Energy (DOE) has revealed that the NGCP only managed to expand transmission lines by 8 percent from 19,425 circuit-kilometers when it acquired the concession in 2009 to 21,027 circuit-kilometers in 2022.   

Villafuerte noted that the NGCP’s ongoing transmission line expansions are delayed on average by 820 days or over two years, as the 37 TDP projects are past their deadlines by as short as 21 days to as long as 2,561 days or seven years.
 
In a prior statement, the congressman called on his colleagues in the House of Representatives to modify or even revoke the NGCP’s franchise after its supposed refusal to be accountable to the recent widespread power outage.