The National Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms Inc. (Nasecore), is urging the Department of Energy (DOE) to address the issues of the lack of power reserves amid the looming tight supply in the Luzon Grid in the coming summer months.
In a report by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, NASECORE president Pete Ilagan wrote a letter to Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla stating that the DOE must stop handling the situation “with kids’ gloves” and push the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) to carry out its mandate of ensuring continuous delivery of electricity through power reserves or ancillary services.
He stressed that the DOE’s “lack of resoluteness is more concerning than the NGCP’s lack of compliance in ensuring adequate energy reserves.”
NASECORE said that the NGCP “consistently failed” to secure energy reserves through competitive bidding, which led to recurring red and yellow alerts.
Ilagan further said that should brownouts occur during the summer months due to the lack of energy reserves, NASECOER has no choice but to hold DOE and NGCP accountable and liable “so as to show that brownouts [have] no place in a reformed power industry called for by the Electric Power Industry Reform Act.”