NGCP power lines (File photo from the Philippine Daily Inquirer)
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Independent Power Producers Association Inc. (Pippa), an organization of the country’s energy generation companies, on Wednesday welcomed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s disclosure in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) last Monday that the government will conduct a performance review of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).
In a statement, Pippa said it “look[s] forward to working with NGCP as a critical partner not only of the generation sector, but together with the distribution sector, for the achievement of a truly unified grid that will be adequate, open, responsive and nondiscriminatory.”
In his Sona, the President said the country already has a “unified national grid,” with the interconnection of the Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao grids, thus enabling more efficient transfers and more competitive pricing of electricity throughout the country.
However, Marcos noted that there are 68 grid connections that are “much delayed” based on the count of the Energy Regulatory Commission.
“We are conducting a performance review of our private concessionaire, the NGCP. We look to NGCP to complete all of its deliverables, starting with the vital Mindanao-Visayas and the Cebu-Negros-Panay interconnections,” he said.
Promoting renewables
Pippa also supported the President’s declaration that with the unified grid, the government will now spare no effort to achieve full household-electrification by the end of his term.
The group acknowledged efforts of the Department of Energy “that have unlocked some bottlenecks, thus making it possible to not only have new power plants, but more significantly, 126 renewable energy contracts with a potential total capacity of 31,000 megawatts.”
The President in his Sona stressed that “renewable energy is the way forward,” noting that his administration is “aggressively promoting renewables” in order for it to provide a “35 percent share in the power mix by 2030, and then on to 50 percent by 2040.”