DLPC to impose 10-centavo increase per kilowatt hour
By Cheneen R. Capon
THE Aboitiz-owned Davao Light and Poewer Company (DLPC) on Monday said it is imposing a 10-centavo increase per kilowatt hour (kWh) on electricity rate starting next month.
DLPC assistant vice president for communications and branding Ross Luga, speaking in the regular Kapehansa Dabaw forum yesterday at the Annex of SM City Davao, said the distribution utility(DU) company has to implement a rate increase next month because it has to source out more expensive power supply from other generation utilities (GUs).
The rate increase will start to reflect on the March bill.
Luga said DLPC has to optimize on the power generating utilities with power supply agreements, which is more expensive compared of the P2.90 per kilowatt (kW) of National Power Corporation (NPC).
The scheduled preventive maintenance of the two units of the200MW Steag State Power Inc. coal-fired power plant, he said, has caused the NPC to decrease its power supply transmitted through the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines to DLPC.
The first 100 MW unit of Steag is scheduled to have its maintenance shutdown from Febraury 19 to March 2, while the shutdown on the second 100 MW units is from February 21 to 16.
Luga explained that Davao Light franchise is facing a tight power situation.
He made a presentation yesterday showing how DLPC has contracted NPC to supply 280 megawatt (MW). But, with the 200 MW off the Mindanao grid, NPC can only transmit an average of 191 MW.
“There’s a shortage of 89 MW and we need to cover that by sourcing-out power supply to other Gus,” Luga said.
Aside from NPC, DLPC is contracting power to HedcorSibulan at average of 33 MW, HedcorTalamo at an average of 3.2 MW and Therma Marine Inc., (TMI) at an average of 30 MW with combined total of 257.2 MW.
This is to address the 330 MW average demand of DLPC’ franchise area composed of Davao City, Panabo City and some municipalities in Davao del Norte.
Luga said DLPC has to operate the standby Bajada Diesel Power Plant to generate 30 MW and implement the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) with 17 participants that has a total load of 10 MW.
“To date, DLPC has a total of 297.2 MW and we have a shortage of 32.8MW,” Luga said. “This is the reason why we need to implement a two hour rotating blackout from February 21 to March 16.
DLPC has not implemented power interruption despite the implementation of the approved schedule of rotating brownouts, according to Luga.
Luga said two hour rotating brownouts should have been implemented from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, which is considered to be peak hours.
“As you can see, DLPC has not implemented any two hour power interruption because there’s a recorded increase in the supply of power from NPC in the past days,” DLPC assistant vice president for engineering Mark Valencia said.
DLPC has a total of 333,680 customers in its franchise area as of January 2015, Luga reported.
