The Joint Congressional Energy Commission (JCEC) will convene to review and decide on the various proposals seeking to amend or revoke the franchise of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), Senator Raffy Tulfo said.
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Looks like band wagon mentality at work and, everybody is trying to jump into the cart to have a good seat. Even before the results of any technical review is out, people are already pointing at NFCP as the lone culprit. Even with the presence of a grid that addresses the needs of everybody but, if there is not enough capacity for energy and ancillary requirements, there is no assurance that the same incident will not happen. To me, the root cause of the problems we have is the lack of capacity.
We were supposed to have two markets for energy and ancillary but, it is now combined into one -WESM. So both energy and ancillary competes in the same market for capacity that is in short supply. Not all plants are capable of supplying ancillary services. This is the reason why these plants need to be assessed first and certified or accredited. The, with a shortage in capacity, power plants would serve the needs of the market first to maximize revenues of the plant. Why can’t the DOE and ERC force require the power plants to supply a portion of their capacity to ancillary? Then technically, the SO should be able to direct the needs without having to bid for the requirements. Of course, it is also assumed that there is enough capacity. Otherwise, forcing the power plants to allot a portion to ancillary will not work also.
Under the EPIRA, the responsibility to ensure adequate capacity rests with the DOE. If the root of the problem is lack of capacity, why do they immediately point a finger at NGCP? Is this what we call IWAS PUSOY?
Monitoring and reporting on the performance of the transmission and distribution grids are the functions of ERC and, sub contracted to the Grid Management Committee and the Distribution Grid Committee. For some reasons the two committees were abolished and forced to liquidate by ERC sometime in 2019. The reason given is that their budget is paid for by the industry players. But, these two committees are private entities registered with the SEC and independent from but reports to the ERC. The appointment of people in the committees and their budgets are approved by ERC as well.
ERC in itself is not in a position to perform the grid management functions. So, after abolishing the two independent committees, ERC appointed an interim committee – PEMC. Where does PEMC get its budget?
So, instead of focusing energy only against NGCP, let us have a total facelift and clean each others backyard or, the smoke in the clean-up of one may totally blind the others around it.