Philippine Independent Power Producers Inc. said Friday imposing penalties on unplanned or forced outages can be restrictive to investors in the power sector.
“Instead of discussing penalties which can be restrictive to investors, we need to discuss solutions and mitigation plans based on our demand and supply situation. Penalties are merely reactionary and do not focus on the problem at hand which is the lack of new plants, particularly peaking plants to act as our insurers when there is a peak in the system,” said PIPPA president Anne Estorco Macias.
PIPPA reacted to calls for penalties on forced and unplanned outages of power plants that are causeing yellow and red alerts this month.
National Grid Corp. of the Philippines declared a yellow alert status for the Luzon grid on Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday on an available capacity of 11,544 megawatts against the peak demand of 10,632 MW.
PIPPA said construction of peaking plants should be encouraged. These plants are tapped during peak hours when the demand is high.