MANILA, Philippines – In anticipation of continuing brownouts in Mindanao, the Department of Energy (DOE) has put in place measures to address the tight power supply situation.

On Thursday, March 13, Malacañang Palace said that in a meeting earlier this week, President Benigno Aquino III directed Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla to come up with solution to the problem highlighted by the Mindanao-wide power outage in late February.

Communications Secretary Sonny Coloma said Aquino also directed the DOE to coordinate with the Department of Science and Technology “in monitoring the inquiry into the causes of the unexpected breakdown.”

“According to the DOE, the tightness in the Mindanao power supply situation is expected to persist through the months of March, April, and May,” said Coloma. (READ: Mindanao 3-hour brownouts to continue)

He said Petilla has since introduced 3 concrete measures that would provide additional capacity, specifically the interruptible load program, the Interim Mindanao Electricity Market (IMEM) and the Mindanao modular generator.

Coloma said the interruptible load program is expected to generate 93.71 megawatts.

“This is the program by which distribution utilities may tap into their generator sets, instead of availing themselves of the system power supply, and they will be compensated for the cost differential through a formula already determined by the ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission),” he said.

The IMEM, expected to generate 124 megawatts, is similar to the Wholesale Electricty Spot Market (WESM), in that “it is a transparency device by which the available supply in a particular grid is made open and public, so that those that would need additional supply may buy directly from offerors of power in that market,” said Coloma.

The last measure, the Mindanao modular generator, is expected to generate 48 megawatts.

Coloma said the additional capacity of 265 megawatts that will be generated by the 3 measures will hopefully “bridge the gap between demand and supply, and thus, lessen the frequency and duration of the rotating brownouts.” – Rappler.com