Lack of capacity led to May 8 outage
In response to the numerous complaints from homeowners belonging to member-associations of our Federation of Village Associations, following the massive power outage that hit Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon on May 8, 2013, we wrote the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), requesting a review of the status of the ancillary service procurement agreement (Aspa) of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP). The ERC granted our request and scheduled a conference between the NGCP and us last July 3.
We would like to point out that the NGCP is mandated by law to ensure a reliable, adequate, secure and stable supply of electricity.
We invited Pete Ilagan, president of the National Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms Inc., who had expressed his concern about that disastrous and very damaging power outage, to join the meeting.
During the conference, the NGCP representative was straightforward enough to answer our questions on the cause of the power outage. And he admitted that, sad to say, NGCP failed to meet the electric capacity requirement under its Aspa.
Had the NGCP faithfully complied with the law, there would have been no power outage last May 8.
Anyway, with our assurance that, in inquiring about the status of the NGCP ancillary service contracts, what we had in mind was to help prevent a repeat of the May 8 power outage, NGCP agreed to furnish us the records of all ERC-approved Aspa and its monthly submissions to the ERC on its utilization of contracted power; and a list of its power providers and the volume of electricity sourced from them based on the Aspa. As of this writing, however, we are still waiting for the requested records.
In the meantime, we are hoping that the conference will serve to make the NGCP more aware of its mandate in ensuring that there will be no power outages in the country as they are simply unacceptable under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act.
—SIEGFRIED VELOSO,
chair, committee on energy,
and past president, Federation of Village Associations, Clubhouse, Alabang Hills
Homeowners Association, Muntinlupa City
