The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) is anticipated to render decisions that will enforce penalties on the ‘unjustified’ transmission project delays of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) as well as the indefensible forced outages of power plants during the summer months.

In the post-SONA discussion convened by the Presidential Communications Office (PCO), ERC Chairperson Monalisa C. Dimalanta hinted that regulatory decision will be issued soon and part of the ruling will be penalty imposition on NGCP for some of its projects that were not completed on time.

“The ERC has made significant progress in resolving all these delays on NGCP’s part with respect to the 37 delayed projects that were mentioned by the President in his last year’s SONA. I just don’t want to preempt the issuance of the decision, but the Commission has already resolved this issue which will be coming out with the actual printout of the decision in the next few days,” the ERC chief noted.

She expounded “there are penalties that were imposed by the Commission for those projects where there were unjustified delays -- because we also have to understand that in some instances delays were justified and those were part of the evaluation of the Commission.”

On the forced outages of plants which distressed Luzon and Visayas grids with recurring yellow and red alerts within the stretch of the summer period, Dimalanta indicated that at least 37 generation companies (GenCos) were found to have breached the allowable outages for their generating units.

And if their submitted explanation and justification for the unplanned shutdowns of their generating facilities could not stand on solid ground based on the regulatory agency’s evaluation, then penalties shall also be meted on these erring GenCos.

“On the outages for the period two weeks in April, we investigated about 139 units that went on outage,” Dimalanta conveyed, while emphasizing that “out of those 139 units, we found 37 generation companies that have exceeded their allowable outages.”

Owing to that, she said the Commission had issued show cause orders (SCOs) to the relevant GenCos so they can explain and justify the sudden unavailability of their generating units in the system.

“Once the explanations are submitted to the Commission, and once we have completed the evaluation of these explanations for those that were not justified, we will also be imposing penalties,” the ERC chief stressed.

Dimalanta qualified that corresponding penalties were also administered in the past on a number of GenCos when their generating facilities had gone beyond the allowable outages, as reckoned on the reliability indices set per technology.

“In previous instances, the Commission had already imposed penalties on generation companies for exceeding their allowable outages, so it will be along the same lines that the Commission will take in this recent investigation of the outages,” the ERC chief reiterated.