Puerto Princesa faces big challenge

THE CONFIDENCE of the investors to put up establishments in the city of Puerto Princesa is a great challenge to the local government unit and power players to come up with a long term solution to the current power problems, says Councilor Modesto Rodriguez II in his privilege speech.Rodriguez observed that with the increasing number of constructed establishments, the city government really needs to find a solution to the power shortage. He noted that once these establishments started operating, it is expected to encounter frequent power interruptions.Presently, there is a total of 46-megawatt installed capacity generated by the power generation companies for the city of Puerto Princesa and the entire province of Palawan. The delta P has 16 megattwatt capacity, PPGI Narra, 10 MW; PPGI Tiniguiban, 9 MW; NPC-Agrekko 11 MW for the total of 46MW. The dependable capacity however is only 32.7 MW because the Delta P is only producing  13.5 MW out of 16MW; PPG Narra 9/10; PPGI Tiniguban 2.2 /9; NPC-Agrekko 8/11 for a total of 32.7 megawatt. The councilor added that the current peak load as of the present is 24 MW during cold days while 27MW for summer days. This implies that there is a reserve of 8.7 MG for cold days and 5.7MW for summer.  The newly-built residential buildings were excluded form the computation.“With this new establishment that will start to operate, we do not know how much power that should be generated to meet the requirement. Baka kulangin na po ang ating reserve. Ang mangyari babalik na naman po tayo sa dating mga problema at ‘yan ay brown out,” Rodriguez stressed.He further added that under the economic equation once there is progress in the community, there’s an influx of more tourists and migrants, and more establishments and residential are expected to rise.“Kaya  bang suplayan ng kuryente natin under current power situation? Definitely not,” Rodriguez stated.He firmly believed that Palawan Electric Cooperative (Paleco) should have a distribtuin impact study and also a term of reference to determine how much power supply is needed.In view of this, majority of the city councilors manifested the appearance of the representatives of Paleco and power producers to appear before the question hour proceedings of the Sangguniang Panlungsod to give some updates on the current power situationThe councilors also believed that the city government needs an assurance from the electric cooperative or else invite other investors to sustain the economic progress of the city. It can be recalled that the city government is planning to purchase own generator set to augment the power needs of the city after experiencing series of power crisis.

By Cheryl A. Galili
The Palawan Times