It may take weeks, or even months, to determine the cause of the outage. Media reports suggest that connectivity issues in southwestern Spain were exacerbated by an outage in the French-Spanish transmission grid. With all these transmission issues occurring almost simultaneously, Spain's power system could not be stabilized, with intermittent power (solar and wind) accounting for 60 percent of the power supply.
Can this happen in the Philippines? Of course. I have been talking and writing about this (https://insiderph.com/insider-view-the-power-sectors-traditional-structure-is-failing-us).
Interconnection is costly, risky
The island outages we have had in the past have proven my point: the traditional structure of having central power plants and long transmission lines is no longer sufficient for delivering reliable and cost-effective electricity.
That is why I have been criticizing the Department of Energy’s (DOE) direction of interconnecting the islands. Not only is interconnection costly, it also poses the risk of a national catastrophe.
The Mindanao-Visayas link is a prime example. Prior to this interconnection, system faults in either Mindanao or Visayas grid were contained within their respective grids.
Now, with these grids interconnected, any fault in the system can lead to the collapse of the entire grid, including Luzon, which is linked with the Visayas grid.
According to news reports, this interconnection cost $1.0 billion. This is a waste of money as it will not benefit consumers. This interconnection has simply added risks to the system.
Who pays for it?
A key question for the Energy Regulation Commission (ERC) is: who will benefit from this interconnection and who will pay for it? As a Luzon-based consumer, I will not want to pay for that. Any Luzon-based consumer should not pay for this.
I remember rejecting this interconnection project during my tenure as CEO of National Power Corp. (Napocor), after commissioning a study that concluded that it did not make economic sense. What fundamental changes occurred in the 1990s that could have changed our findings? I can only speculate that the motivation may have stemmed from a perceived “excess” of coal capacity in Mindanao.
This interconnection would only make sense if the interconnection capacities from Cebu to Negros and Panay and Leyte were significantly increased. However, doing so would entail substantial costs and further increase system risks.
Key lessons
Therefore, the lessons learned are: First, let us be conscious that intermittent power like solar and wind can introduce risks that may compromise grid stability. Second, let us stop relying on interconnection and grid-supplied power.
Reliable and cheaper power can be brought to communities and villages. I have done studies that show that there are systems that can cut costs by as much as 29 percent and dramatically reduce the risks of grid-based outages.
This is bringing power to the people.
A power industry expert with over 40 years in experience as chief executive officer in firms ranging from banking, power, and advisory services.
