No concrete solution yet for 2015 brownouts

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MANILA – Filipinos may expect power outages up to the last quarter next year unless “regulatory shackles” are eased by the Energy Regulatory Commission, according to the Department of Energy yesterday.

With an increased probability of forced power outages and other system restrictions, the department is seeing an irreversible brownout series neat year.

On its latest supply outlook, the department also raised the outage rate to 13 percent from the typical 4.0 to 7.0 percent forced outages, usually employed in the energy planning.

DOE also added that the proposed lifting of the secondary cap for the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) is stopping the department from implementing the proposed feared brownouts.

The forecast indicated that the country will be suffering from worst power outage series during the second week of April, next year.

This will happen as the country will be facing a power supply deficiency estimated at 285 megawatts.

The power outages will also coincide with the Malampaya gas production facility’s month-long shutdown from March 15 to April 14, 2015.

The DOE said that the deficiency during those periods, which range from 37 to 180 megawatts, will cause a rotating power outage for up to hours.

It also added that they are having problems on detecting the need for contingency reserve of the system which is placed at about 647MW for Luzon grid.

The department is still currently studying possible measures to ease, the power outages in 2015.