• CHERYL G. CRUZ
The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) is pushing for an amendment to the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) of 2001 so that penalties it will collect from erring power industry players could be redirected as refunds to consumers inconvenienced by power outages.
This proposal was raised by ERC chairperson and chief executive officer Monalisa Dimalanta during the recent congressional inquiry into the power outage that hit Western Visayas from Jan. 2 to 5.
Dimalanta said that under the EPIRA, the ERC is authorized to impose penalties, ranging from P50,000 to a maximum of P50 million for violations by power industry players, adding that these penalties are being remitted to the National Treasury.
“One of the recommendations that we made for the EPIRA amendment is to allow ERC the authority to order the application of penalties for return, either in the form of refund or discounts, to the consumers who suffer the inconvenience or the violation that resulted in the interruption of service,” she said in a statement Jan. 12. “Right now, we don’t have the authority. But if there is an amendment in the law, then we can have that authority to make the application.”
Dimalanta, during the hearing of the Senate Energy Committee Jan. 10, also on the four-day widespread blackout, vowed to “relentlessly pursue the exacting of full measure of accountability from agencies responsible for the blackout.”
The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines has maintained that it did not fail in its obligation to stabilize the transmission system, and that the outage was due to the “unplanned shutdowns of power generators”.
“We reiterate our earlier pronouncements that there was no transmission disturbance before the tripping of the PEDC Unit 1 at 12:06 p.m. Jan. 2, as NGCP was able to recover the transmission system and normalize voltage. This normal voltage situation persisted until several power plants inexplicably tripped at 2:19 p.m. Data from our system shows no abnormality in voltage and system stability,” the NGCP had said.
But Energy Assistant Secretary Mario Marasigan said in a statement that “in the sequence of events that were presented during the various meetings on the Panay incident, the NGCP failed to show clear indication that it had prudently exercised its authority to balance supply and demand in the Panay Grid, specifically at the onset of the tripping of PEDC Unit 1 which have contributed to the voltage problem in the area”.
He said that while the NGCP claimed that multiple outages of power plants caused the blackout, “the tripping of PEDC 1 already signaled the need for NGCP to take action, which they failed to do, given the fragile nature of Panay”. | CGC
