NGCP pushes interconnection of Visayas and Mindanao grids

MANILA, Philippines -  The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) is pursuing the planned interconnection of the Visayas and Mindanao grids.

NGCP spokesman Cynthia Perez-Alabanza said they have already filed a query with the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) about the Leyte-Mindanao Interconnection Project (LMIP).

The regulatory filing, she said, would allow the NGCP to determine if it would be able to recover the costs for the proposed project.

NGCP wants to push through with the first phase of the project but would want to know if the ERC would consider the urgency of LMIP, thus would allow NGCP to issue provisional authority.

The government had asked NGCP to consider the LMIP and include it in its Transmission Development Plan (TDP). But the project would take time to build and would depend on the demand of the market.

“The project will take a long time to build. So if it’s seven years, hopefully by that time there will be surplus power to transport,” Alabanza said, adding they might as well start with the conduct of the feasibility study.

The study, she noted, would also help NGCP determine the cost of the project, which was initially estimated at P10 billion in 2006 by the National Transmission Corp. (TransCo).

In 2006, the company’s board approved to include the LMIP in the list of ongoing projects from its status as an indicative project.

TransCo then was eyeing to tap various traditional financing sources like the Japan Bank International Cooperation (JBIC), Export-Import Bank and Calyon to fund the LMIP.

The LMIP was supposed to be included in the list of projects the Asian Development Bank (ADB) will finance but the multilateral financial institution had cancelled the project from its list after the government raised its intention to defer it.

Since the privatization of TransCo is already in the offing, the government had opted to defer the LMIP to allow the winning concessionaire to carry out the project.

The interconnection project was originally designed for a 250-kilovolt high-voltage density cable bipolar link with a total transfer capacity of 500 megawatts.

The project was supposed to include a 455-kilometer long overhead line and 23 km submarine cable with a maximum depth of around 1,000 meters below sea level. It emanates from the existing Ormoc Converter Station in Leyte and terminates at Kirahon Converter station in Northcentral Mindanao via Southern Leyte and Northeastern Mindanao.

TransCo had also earlier proposed the speeding up of the implementation of the LMIP to 2008 from earlier scheduled 2011 to help resolve the imminent power shortage in Mindanao.