THE chairperson of the House committee on energy assured on Tuesday that there will be no power outage in Luzon in the remaining days of April.
Representative Reynaldo Umali, committee chair, said the Luzon grid still has 1,500 megawatts (MW) of power reserves, which is more than enough to augment should any big power plant conked out during critical period on summer days.
"We are lucky because since March 15 up to now, we have not yet spent a single centavo additional increase in our electric bill," Umali said.
Umali said the power demand is not that much as he recalled that reserves even reached as high as 4,000 MW during the Holy Week.
He said the Malampaya's annual maintenance shutdown, which started March 15 and expected to end Tuesday, April 14, could further lower the price of electricity despite expected huge demands in the coming months.
Umali described the bicameral conference committee's failure to approve the proposed emergency powers for President Benigno Aquino III a "blessing in disguise" since the expected power shortage in March did not happened.
"We want to see a steady supply of electricity from Luzon down to Mindanao in the future by building more power plants that will meet the growing demand of electricity," said Umali.
Meanwhile, Umali has recommended in the national development plan to use renewable energy in Mindanao and not depend on coal power plant alone, which is more expensive and does not jive with the environmental laws.
He said that the provisions that contradict the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws were temporarily deferred just to ensure the continued supply of power in Mindanao.
"Mindanao can seriously consider hydro-electric plants and other renewable energy such as solar… is near the equator and solar energy could be a big help," said Umali. (Sunnex)