#power outage

Earlier, the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC) warned of possible blackouts and power outages even by Election Day, which is scheduled for May 9. "From NGCP's (National Grid Corporation of the Philippines) official power outlook, the thin operating reserves will start on the 3rd week of April 2022 until the last week of May 2022. If the baseload coal plants continue to be on shutdown during this critical period, the forced outages could deplete the thin operating reserve and could trigger rotating blackouts," ICSC Chief Data Scientist Jephraim Manansala said during a virtual briefing last week. As of 2020, the largest sources of power generation in the Philippines according to the Department of Energy (DOE) are as follows: coal (58.2 percent), natural gas (19.5 percent), geothermal (10.8 percent), hydroelectric (7.2 percent), and oil (2.5 percent). For its part, the Philippine Electricity Market Corporation (PEMC) has called for harnessing renewable energy sources to decrease dependence on conventional power sources such as coal. “Institutionalizing effective strategies is imperative for us to fully harness the benefits of these RE resources, which include energy prices and supply stability to power up the Philippine economy in the new normal,” said PEMC President Leonido Pulido III. (LKI) urged the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to probe recent unplanned plant outages. Read more in our articles including "Luzon peak energy demand exceeds pre-pandemic level, blackouts possible by May" and "Globe PowerSurf: Php99 for 50MB, Php499 for 1GB".