Power rates may go up in Luzon; long blackouts feared in MM

Luzon power users may have to deal with higher electricity rates – aside from long blackouts – if a court order shutting down a vital transmission line is enforced.

A National Transmission Corp. official who declined to be named said decommissioning the 230 kilovolt Sucat-Araneta-Balintawak transmission line – as ordered by a Makati court – is expected to cost the Manila Electric Co. 10.13 centavos more per kilowatt-hour.

The court order was prompted by complaints from Dasmariñas Village residents regarding the alleged health risks posed by the transmission lines.

A shutdown will affect Metro Manila, including the business areas in Makati and Ortigas, as well as large parts of Bulacan.

“Resectorization of the Meralco sub-transmission network will be implemented for system security. However, resectorization from two to three groups will increase Meralco system losses to about P93.45 million annually,” the official said.

Power rates in the wholesale electricity spot market or WESM are also likely to soar as power disruption in the grid normally affects the prices.

“We don’t have specific figures on the rate impact but that is the expectation,” Lasse Holopainen, Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC) president, said. PEMC is the operator of WESM.

“System cost will definitely go up significantly, and certain emergency issues to ensure supply will need to be taken into account by TransCo,” Holopainen said.

“Even with generation redispatch and Meralco network resectorization, rotating brownouts will still be required if the system demand exceeds 6,300 megawatts,” the TransCo official said.

An alternate underground line is estimated to cost P400 million per kilometer, or 10 times the cost of an overhead transmission facility.

Based on a power rationing scheme being readied by TransCo and Meralco, affected areas will experience two to three hours power interruptions daily during weekdays between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.

TransCo president Arthur Aguilar said last week the Makati court has accepted their motion to allow contesting parties to submit their respective arguments within 10 days.

The Sucat-Araneta line is the shortest route for power delivered from the coal-fired, gas, and geothermal power plants in South Luzon to Meralco’s north sector load center in Metro Manila.

The contested transmission facility includes high tension cables that stretch from the South Superhighway to Fort Bonifacio, Dasmariñas Village in Makati City to Araneta Avenue in Quezon City.