Energy think thank Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities said Thursday the Panay Island blackout on Jan. 2 to 5 underscored the urgent need for more distributed and flexible generation in the country.
ICSC, a climate and energy policy group based in the Philippines that promotes climate resilience and low-carbon development, said that as Panay is heavily dependent on a few centralized coal-fired power plants, any disturbance could have disastrous effects on the entire sub-grid.
It said generation and grid planning should evolve to embrace more distributed sources to ensure grid stability, reducing reliance on a few power plants.
“Through distributed generation, power generation becomes more resilient, less susceptible to single-point failures, and adaptable to variable demand conditions,” ICSC said.
ICSC said a reevaluation of the island’s energy mix and grid resilience measures is imperative.
“This can include exploring advanced energy storage technologies, enhancing grid interconnections, and strategically integrating renewable energy sources to diversify the island’s energy portfolio,” it said.
It said there is a need for more monitoring of reserve requirements per sub-grid, especially in Visayas, where each island exhibits a distinct energy mix and infrastructure conditions.
ICSC said the total system blackout occurred because there was not enough power generation to meet the demand in Panay Island, as all four large coal-fired power plants became unavailable.
“While the incident was mainly a power generation problem, more issues came up that, if addressed, could have prevented the island-wide blackout. Had NGCP implemented manual load dropping in the 2-hour window, to which the red alert status should have been declared in the whole island, rotating power outages could have significantly reduced the load demand requirements in Panay,” it said.