Interruptible Load: VECO addresses shortage of power using agreement

CEBU, Philippines – In order to avert power outages, the Visayan Electric Company Inc. yesterday implemented the Interruptible Load Agreement, after the Cebu-Negros-Panay grid sustained a deficiency in its power supply.

“We implemented our interruptible load agreemenrt with SM, Ayala, San Miguel, E-mall to avoid interrupting our other customers,” VECO spokesperson Ethel Natera said.

Natera said that the deloading started at 1:30 pm yesterday and they have deloaded 11 megawatts out of the 15 megawatts share in load drop.

Carmela Castillo, corporate communications officer of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (formerly the National Transmission Corporation) said that the CNP grid is now on “red alert” due to a deficiency in power generation.

Castillo said that from 1p.m. until 2 p.m., the CNP grid had a power supply deficiency of 9 megawatts and incurred another power deficiency of 31megawatts from 6 p. m. until 7 p.m.

She however said that in spite of the deficiency in the power supply in the CNP grid, the Luzon grid has supplied power to cover the said deficiency.

In the Interruptible Load Agreement, as VECO calls it, all stakeholders agreed to deload from VECO and other distribution utilities when the need arises. The deloading last March 31 was the first time VECO implemented the agreement after the signing it last January.

The request is part of VECO’s Interruptible Load Agreement with big power consumers and Governor Gwen Garcia, which is aimed at helping avoid a power shortage in Metro Cebu.

Big power consumers are asked to generate their own power whenever there is a shortage.

VECO on the other hand shall pay the customer compensation for full or partial deloading when they deload from VECO as requested. The amount represents the incremental cost incurred by the customer due to the deloading.

It can be recalled that last March 31 some generating plants encountered technical problems.

With power reserves in the CNP grid at a critical level, VECO was requested by NGCP to shave off 9.5 MW of power.

With this, VECO requested two of its major customers, Waterfront Hotel and SM City Cebu to deload from its system and they readily responded to the request.

Due to such deloading by SM and Waterfront totaling to seven megawatts, hundreds of customers were spared from the inconvenience of an outage as only a small area had an outage.

The Memorandum of Agreement was signed last January 30 between Governor Garcia, Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and Cebu Business Club to address the power shortage. — Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon/NLQ (THE FREEMAN)