Navotas fish port blocks power plant’s 100MW upgrade

MANILA, Philippines – Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla is set to negotiate with the Philippine Fisheries Development Authority (PFDA) to allow Millennium Energy to proceed with upgrading its 310-megawatt gas turbine power plant in the Navotas Fish Port Complex.

“Millennium Energy is having problems right now. We can’t afford to have problems like this,” Petilla said.

Due to right-of-way issues, Millennium Energy could not rehabilitate its power plant, which is targeted to be completed in March 2015.

“March 1 is the deadline. For every week of delay, we face another problem,” he said.

Power distributor Manila Electric Company (Meralco) is looking at Millennium Energy’s additional capacity of 100MW in preparation for the expected energy deficit in summer.

“All our deliveries and activities are now put on hold order. The critical deliveries are due next week. Millennium is very concerned that PFDA will disallow these, our timetable will be delayed,” the power company said.

Power outages

Without added energy capacities committed by power companies, Petilla warned that by March, Luzon will be experiencing outages from two to 3 hours.

The Department of Energy (DOE) said 678MW of energy is needed to fill Luzon grid’s 647MW contingency reserve.

Computing committed power capacities is one of the DOE’s pressing concerns, as the figures continue to fluctuate.

This October, Meralco has signed up a total of 149.5 MW of committed interruptible load capacity from various ILP participants. However, due to its voluntary nature, Petilla said Luzon could not count on it.

Giving the President emergency powers would be the country’s last resort. Under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001, the highest executive official will have the liberty to contract additional power supply without going through Congress. – Rappler.com