THE Philippines needs more generation and storage capacities given vulnerabilities highlighted by the war in the Middle East, industry stakeholders said on Tuesday.
“We have always talked about shortage and supply in the country, and the issuance of energy shortage alerts always happens every summer,” Developers of Renewable Energy for Advancement Inc. President Jose Layug said during an Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines’ forum.
“We have kept saying the only way to address it is to have more available supply in the market so we do not have to face the same issues, and now this is needed more than ever,” he added.
Energy Undersecretary Felix William Fuentebella agreed and said stakeholders also needed to put up disaster-resilient infrastructure as the country was also vulnerable to natural disasters.
“It is not enough to just keep putting up more generation capacities, it is also about whether they can withstand natural disasters,” he said.
“We don’t just have intense dry seasons, we also have volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and typhoons among others. There are a lot of ways we can utilize energy infrastructure and integrate it with something else, such as agriculture for example.”
Energy Regulatory Commission director Sharon Montaner said more reserve capacity or energy storage systems were needed — the latter particularly because power being generated by some renewable energy plants was being wasted.
“I think it’s also very timely to talk about reserve requirements... it is important in order to maximize our grid’s variable renewable energy,” she said.
“Currently, we do not have enough energy storage systems to absorb the over-generation of solar plants during the day, so that gets wasted, in turn leading to a very thin supply in the evening,” Montaner noted.
“So again, this highlights the need for more energy storage systems for the renewable energy plants.”
Both MGEN Renewable Energy Inc. CEO and President Dennis Jordan and Prime CoreGen President and CEO Jose Victor Emmanuel de Dios said that aside from increased generation capacity, there was also a need to diversify sources as the country continues its energy transition journey.
“Overall, the important matter for us is to accelerate the diversification and completion of energy projects in order to have supply availability and address the tightness in the grid and also price volatility,” Jordan said.
De Dios, meanwhile, said: “I think in order to address supply, we must continue to drill for energy sources and be aggressive about it. We have to empower our state-owned oil company and go on the offensive when the time is right and calls for it in order to seize opportunities.”
