The Energy Regulatory Commission said Wednesday 72 of the 348 approved projects of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines suffered delays, which the company attributed mostly to right-of-way issues and the COVID-pandemic.
ERC chairperson Monalisa Dimalanta said the completion of six backbone national projects or those of national significance and 66 others was delayed. Dimalanta said during the Senate committee on energy hearing 33 delayed projects are in Luzon, 19 in the Visayas and 14 in Mindanao.
She said the ERC was still studying if it could impose penalties over the project delays.
NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Perez-Alabanza apologized for the delays, but said there were factors beyond the company’s control.
“I would like to clarify and express our apologies for the delayed projects. We admit there are delayed projects, but we do something about it…It’s normal for some disturbance on a day to day,” Alabanza said.
“[They were] delayed not because we do not want to complete them, but because we experience many hurdles. Right-of-way,” she said.
NGCP asked for patience as it strives to accelerate the completion of the projects. The company said it had completed 56 projects, including the Mariveles-Hermosa 500kV Transmission Line; the Luzon Voltage Improvement Projects Stages 1, 3 and 4; the San Jose-Quezon 230kV Transmission line 3 project,; and the Pagbilao 500kV Extra High Voltage Substation.
NGCP also energized the Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Project last month and expects to gradually increase the transfer capacity of the facility over the coming months and reach its full capacity of 450 megawatts by the third quarter of 2023.
NGCP expects to complete the Hermosa-San Jose 500kV Transmission Line Project and the Cebu-Negros-Panay Stage 3 Backbone Project this year.
NGCP said the participation of all foreigners in the projects had been in accordance with constitutional and legal requirements.
“All foreign employees, when they were still with NGCP, performed only technical, assistive and advisory functions. None of them was an executive or managing officer of the company,” it said.
NGCP also denied allegations of grid vulnerability as a result of foreign participation in the company.
The company said it implemented various measures to ensure that the transmission system is protected from unauthorized remote access.
NGCP said it maintains a separate network called the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System for all operations and transmission-related work.
SCADA is a stand-alone system connected to a private network. It is not connected to the internet or to NGCP’s other network.
“This, along with other security protocols, makes unsupervised direct remote access impossible. It also prevents cybersecurity incidents, such as viruses, malwares, or cyber threats, from occurring in the SCADA System,” NGCP said.