MANILA, Philippines — Senator Sherwin Gatchalian urged the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to consider penalizing power generation companies over the forced or unplanned outages of their power plants. It was revealed during a Senate committee on energy hearing that there are no penalties for power generation companies failing to meet their committed capacity due to power plant outages. “I just want to urge the department (DOE) and also the regulator (ERC) to really look at this concept of disincentivizing delays, forced outages, unplanned outages,” Gatchalian said during the hearing. “We have to make sure that consumers are not being saddled with the responsibility of the proponents because nata-transfer ‘yan sa consumers,” he added. The DOE has attributed the ongoing unexpected brownouts in certain parts of Luzon due to the “simultaneous unplanned outages of several power plants.” /eeREAD: Power outage in Luzon ‘extraordinary occurrence,’ DOE exec tells SenateREAD: Senate energy panel starts probe on Luzon brownoutsADVERTISEMENTRead NextLATEST STORIESMOST READ

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer April 25, 2019 08:37 UTC