The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) on Tuesday highlighted the need for greater investments in power generation projects, more so now when the transmission grid across the country has interconnected and necessarily strengthened.
The NGCP said more investment is needed to optimize the benefits of the recently strengthened transmission interconnection in the country.
“…Transmission and power generation go hand in hand. Sufficient power generation development supported by reliable transmission is the formula for optimized energy development. This will support the country’s push towards economic recovery,” said the NGCP, in a statement.
“We have long advocated for a holistic approach to energy industry development. Generation and transmission must be developed together. One cannot be made to bear the whole burden of keeping the industry stable,” the company added.
NGCP recently energized the 230-kiloVolt Cebu-Negros-Panay backbone project stage 3 (CNP3) that paved the way for the transfer of power capacity from Panay to Negros to Cebu and vice versa.
CNP3 is comprised of 544 transmission towers spanning 354 circuit kilometers of overhead lines, 58 circuit kilometers of submarine cables and ten substations.
The project was filed for Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approval in 2016 at a cost of P43.41 billion. The ERC granted the project provisional approval in 2017 of only a year’s worth of capital expenditure amounting to P176.75 million.
NGCP said it has yet to receive ERC’s final approval even after the completion of the project, .
“While the line will help improve the delivery of power, more baseload plants in Negros and more in-island generation in Panay are needed to prevent the occurrence of power outages,” the NGCP said.
Aside from the CNP3, NGCP also recently energized the Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection which fully linked Mindanao to Luzon and Visayas as well as a circuit line of the Hermosa-San Jose 500kV transmission line considered critical to the Luzon Grid.
