Meralco lists 80 ILP participants to plug power shortage

Rappler.com

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Meralco lists 80 ILP participants to plug power shortage

AFP

If successful, the overall committed interruptible load for summer could reach 1,034.93MW, exceeding the initial target for power reserves

MANILA, Philippines – The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) already signed 80 customers from the private sector to participate in the Interruptible Load Program (ILP).

The ILP works by calling on business customers with loads of at least 1 megawatt (MW) to run their own generator sets, if needed, instead of drawing power from the grid. As of February, 252 participants committed to join ILP to ease the burden on the power grid.

The additional participants will contribute 393.36 megawatts (MW), given that the committed interruptible load (CIL) for the summer is now up to 667.29MW. Meralco also signed up 1.7MW of CIL from the government sector.

Contestable customer participants or those with a monthly average peak demand of at least 1MW have signed up a total of 264.73MW of interruptible load. Of this, 110.44 MW will come from different retail electricity suppliers (RES) and 154.29 MW from MPower, the retail electricity supplier unit of Meralco.

Still leading is SM Prime Holdings Incorporated (185.61MW); followed by Robinsons Land Corporation (23.15MW); and Waltermart Malls (14.30MW).

Apart from the captive and contestable customers who have signed up for the ILP, Meralco said the Cavite Economic Zone (CEZ) is also joining. CEZ will be contributing 7.5MW of interruptible load.

Meralco is expecting a total potential of 367.64MW more of ILP, of which, 15.08MW will come from captive customers. 232.56MW will come from contestable customers and 120MW of capacity will come from power plants that are up for interconnection with the grid.

If successful, the overall CIL could reach 1,034.93MW.

As of March 9, the power reserves stood at more than 1,500MW. The Department of Energy (DOE) said in February that Luzon will have over 1,000MW of additional capacity over the summer this year to address the looming power shortage.

Of that total, 739.58MW will come from the ILP. Meralco previously said that it intends to expand ILP commitment to 500MW.

Dry runs

Meralco also conducted two ILP dry runs to test the operational effectiveness of the protocols.

But not all who signed up for the ILP participated. And of those who participated, some did not de-load 100% of their committed capacity.

But Meralco noted that there was 65% or 457MW de-loaded during the dry run.

“What’s important to note in this dry run is we would have been able to spare approximately over 500,000 customers from MLD (manual load dropping),” Meralco Vice President Alfredo Panlilio said.

With ILP, power supply from the grid that will not be consumed by participating customers will be available for use by other customers within the franchise area.

Through this, the aggregate demand for power from the system will be reduced to a more manageable level during the anticipated power crisis this summer.

The government is banking on the ILP and commissioning of some power plants to help plug the power shortage this year. – Rappler.com

Add a comment

Sort by

There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.

Summarize this article with AI

How does this make you feel?

Loading
Download the Rappler App!