TransCo hosts international meet on electricity supply

MANILA, Philippines -  State-run National Transmission Corp. (TransCo), together with its industry partners, will host the second meeting of an international body on electricity supply.

The Association of Electricity Supply Industry in East Asia and Western Pacific’s (AESIEAP) Technical Committee Working Group #1 (WG-1) will hold a meeting on Feb. 21 to 23 at the Sulo Riviera Hotel in Quezon City.

“The main objective of WG-1 is to share knowledge and experience with members on smart grid technology, help them implement the smart grid in the future, and contribute to propagate the technology through the release of the procedures for smart grid expansion,” TransCo president Rolando Bacani said.

The output of the working group will be presented at the Conference on the Electric Power Supply Industry (CEPSI) in Indonesia in October.

Expected participants in this month’s conference are delegates from Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and energy industry players from the Philippines including the Department of Energy, National Power Corp., National Electrification Administration, Energy Regulatory Commission, National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, Manila Electric Co. and TeaM Energy.

Smart grid means “computerizing” the electric utility grid. It includes adding two-way digital communication technology and computer processing from power plants all the way to electricity consumers.

Each device on the network can be provided with matching sensors to gather data from power meters, voltage sensors, fault detectors, plus two-way digital communication between the device in the field and the utility’s network operations center.

“The smart grid’s automation technology lets the utility adjust and control each individual device or millions of devices from a central location,” TransCo said.

This month, AESIEAP’s WG-1 members will continue discussions held during the kick-off meeting hosted by the Korea Electric Power Corp. (Kepco) in Seoul and Jeju Island, South Korea in November and December 2011, respectively.

Member-delegates shared their smart grid projects and visited Korea’s Jeju Transmission and Distribution Center, Smart Grid Information Center and Smart Grid Test-Bed.

In 2010, Kepco announced that it would invest more than $7 billion in its smart grid business by 2030 to boost efficiency of electricity facilities and cut Korea’s greenhouse gas emissions.

AESIEAP is a Hong-Kong based organization that wants to exchange expertise and technology among companies involved in generation, transmission and distribution of electricity in East Asia and the Western Pacific.

It also targets studying problems and solutions at the regional level and help in the development of the electricity supply industry in the area.

AESIEAP was formed following the first technical conference of representatives of the electricity supply industry in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific in Hong Kong in 1975.