From the
Philippine Daily Inquirer.
======================
MANILA, Philippines – Parts of Metro Manila and Luzon should expect one-hour rotating brownouts Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., according to power distributor Manila Electric Co.
Joe Zaldarriaga, Meralco external communications manager, in an interview over dzMM, said outages were expected in certain areas in Caloocan, Quezon City, Malabon, Batangas and Cavite.
Zaldarriaga explained that the outages were due to a 245-megawatt power supply deficit in the Luzon grid. This deficit is expected to further worsen to as much as 380 megawatts by 2 p.m., he added.
=======================
This is the problem with having short term vision and corruption in the Philippines.
Instead of tackling this problem 10 years ago. The government basically gave Meralco and the IPPs the task of handling the problem. And as expected, all they did was to build something to maximize their profits instead of actually solving the problem.
They basically created band-aid solution to gun shot wound. Instead of building multiple alternative sources of power like wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, etc. They built coal and oil power plants.
Not only that, they didn't even build it to be efficient nor did they build enough to guarantee enough supply to last more than 10 years in a growing population.
How on earth could they not foresee this problem 5 to 10 years ago? It already happened once, why is it happening again?
And what happened to all the water from Typhoon Ondoy? Why is Metro Manila suffering from water shortage? Oh right, they dumped it all to the sea because they never built watersheds and spillways to collect flood waters!
There is no single solution to solve this electricity shortage problem. This has to be dealt with in several fronts.
First, they have to educate consumers on saving electricity, not just to lower the cost but to conserve electricity to be able to delay upgrading and building new power plants. Electricity not used today is electricity that can be used tomorrow.
Contrary to beliefs, one does not need to generate 500MW of electricity if the need is only 450MW. The 50MW that is not used is fuel that is not spent and less wear and tear on equipments. If there is a capacity of 500MW and only 450MW is needed, that extra 50MW is room to grow for the power company as it is needed over time. Which saves them from having to spend new capital to build a new power plant to supply that 50MW.
They can do this by having people change to CFLs, turning off lights when not needed, turning to solar powered water heaters, etc. It can also help if they start using 2 way power meters like in some parts of the US. This is where if a household has solar panels and generates more electricity than needed, it is transferred to the power companies and shows up as a credit to the household's bill..
Electricity generation nowadays is not a use it or lose it kind of thing. Extra power can be saved in industrial batteries to boost power if needed.
Second, multiple types of power sources is needed. Wind, solar and geothermal should be used as this is the most abundant and cheapest form of electricity the Philippines can use. Why are they not building these?
Third, they should start doing projections on power consumption for the next 50 years and build according to that projection.
Why wait until there's a power crisis before they do anything and then it ends up giving the President emergency powers which ends up benefiting a small group of people who has the connection to make tons of money on these things which ends up giving a kickback to the politicians?
Oh wait, I just answered my own question. Never mind.
Comments