High power rates and brownouts - Stories of a Life by the Sea

For many weeks now, Puerto Galera residents have been suffering from high power rates and frequent brownouts. What is most depressing is that no one seems to be doing anything to address the problem. The people have not seen leadership from any government official to get answers from the power supplier of Mindoro, ORMECO.

Mr. Roman Araño of ORMECO said that the rate since September is 10.6638 per kwh. The reason for the increase is because of ORMECO’s contract with MIRANT, a power producer that sells electricity to ORMECO at approximately 12 pesos per kwh. Even if NAPOCOR and the other power producers sell electricity at half the price of MIRANT, the final rate would be the average of all the power producers.

Araño said ORMECO is under contract to buy electricity from MIRANT worth 4 million pesos a day. More electricity from them means higher power rate for the consumers.

ORMECO consumers should find out more about the contract with the power producers. Business leaders and government officials should find ways to decrease the price of electricity now that the price of fuel is going down.

PHESI has been meeting with officials regarding the multi-billion wind farm to be constructed at the mountain of Tabinay. Both these power plants will produce electricity at a much lower cost. If more power producers will sell electricity at 6 pesos or even less per kwh then the rates will also go down.

One Comment

Sewerbang

July 7, 2012 at 9:57 pm

What is not mentioned here is that NPC/SPUG heavily subsidizes the cost of electricity in OrMin, which is basically the generation charge + the distribution charge. Without this subsidy from the central gov’t the end user could be paying close to 20 P kw/h. The windmills will deliver to Ormeco electricity at a lower cost than Mirant, but those savings will mostly reduce the subsidy coming from NPC/SPUG and not the end user kw/h-rate. The windmills do share a little of their profit with the community which goes to reducing the end user rate but it’s very minimal. OrMin generation capacity would need to be increased by about 10 MW so that there would be an end to the load shedding and resultant brownouts. Problem is NPC/SPUG wouldn’t be happy because they’d have to shell out more subsidies. Investors aren’t too keen either because payments for the power generated don’t always come as scheduled. The 300MW P11Bio Submarine Cable will come once OrMin has hydro power to export to Luzon, but it will never be built to close OrMin’s 10 MW peak power deficiency. In the end let’s hope the wind will pick up towards 7pm (peak power consumption) so that the windmills would spare us the next brownout. If you have more money than patience get a big uninterrupted power supply – UPS and diesel genset with ATS.

Sewerbang

July 7, 2012 at 9:57 pm

What is not mentioned here is that NPC/SPUG heavily subsidizes the cost of electricity in OrMin, which is basically the generation charge + the distribution charge. Without this subsidy from the central gov’t the end user could be paying close to 20 P kw/h. The windmills will deliver to Ormeco electricity at a lower cost than Mirant, but those savings will mostly reduce the subsidy coming from NPC/SPUG and not the end user kw/h-rate. The windmills do share a little of their profit with the community which goes to reducing the end user rate but it’s very minimal. OrMin generation capacity would need to be increased by about 10 MW so that there would be an end to the load shedding and resultant brownouts. Problem is NPC/SPUG wouldn’t be happy because they’d have to shell out more subsidies. Investors aren’t too keen either because payments for the power generated don’t always come as scheduled. The 300MW P11Bio Submarine Cable will come once OrMin has hydro power to export to Luzon, but it will never be built to close OrMin’s 10 MW peak power deficiency. In the end let’s hope the wind will pick up towards 7pm (peak power consumption) so that the windmills would spare us the next brownout. If you have more money than patience get a big uninterrupted power supply – UPS and diesel genset with ATS.