Mindoro, a major tourism destination of the country, is not only battered each year by some of the 20 cyclones that visit the Philippines but has also been unable to develop fully because of intermittent power supply.
There have been serious attempts in the past to solve the power crisis—setting up a wind farm, recently a private company’s commitment to install a solar farm in the province, operating hydro plants (which are useless during long hot dry spells), among others—yet the province continues to suffer from outages that have affected the lives and livelihood of residents and businesses.
Mindoro is the 7th largest island in the Philippines (land area of 10,571 square kilometers) and a total population of over 1.331 million in 2015, located at the southwestern coast of Luzon and northeast of Palawan.
For over a decade, people from Mindoro have had to make do with the oft in-operational power system of the province and many have complained of frequently purchasing new appliances because of the heavy wear- and- tear from the outages.
In May 2020, the Oriental Mindoro Electric Cooperative, Inc. (ORMECO) vowed to ramp up efforts to address the power supply problems within its coverage area, claiming that the rotational power interruptions implemented under its service area were due to supply shortage.
In a letter to the Department of Energy (DOE), ORMECO said it was not getting enough power supply from its independent power producers to meet the present demand of the province due to the expiration of its existing contracts with Mindoro Grid Corp. (MGC) and the retiring generation units of Global Business Holdings, Inc. (GBH).
The power coop cited the GBH has not been operating since March 2020 its power generating sets, with a combined capacity of 5 MW, which are "undergoing major overhaul" and expected to be operational on October 31, 2020.
It also noted that the two generating units of Power One Corp. (POC) are unavailable, while the power station of MGC in Roxas is only generating 3.2 MW of power.
Occidental Mindoro also
In May 2021, Senator Bong Go asked DoE Secretary Alfonso Cusi to address the decades-long power supply problem in Occidental Mindoro. He said the DoE talked to the National Electrification Administration to assess the situation and determine the problem in the province’s power supply
The DoE instructed NEA and Occidental Mindoro Electric Cooperative Inc. (Omeco) to submit a report but Go thinks the problem can be addressed not by the submission of reports but by requesting other power providers to help LGUs and concerned cooperatives to bring stable supply of power for the economy to gradually reopen.
“There should be well-conditioned health care facilities as hospital equipment are power-operated.”
Church hosts roundtable
A virtual roundtable last Monday organized by the Apostolic Vicariate of Calapan, Mindoro, the Center for Energy, Ecology and Development (CEED),NASSA-Caritas and the Global Catholic Community Ministries in keeping with Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’highlighted compact solutions to the power crisis, through community-based solar projects that residents could lease from the local government units (including barangays) for say 10 or 15 years, so that even the remotest fishing or farming barangay residents could enjoy electricity at night without having to connect to the more expensive and undependable supply from the main grid.
WeGen Phils. And WeGen Laudato Si’ declared full support to church-based people’s organizations in Mindoro as it launched its campaign for immediate reforms and actions to address the energy crisis in the island province.
WGLSI president Charlie Ayco said “we have done our research, and we know that there are better, more reliable solutions that can be implemented to solve the electricity supply problems in Mindoro,” as he identified Mindoro’s power problems as:
• Unreliable or insufficient power supply that results in frequent brown-outs.
• High power cost for consumers aside from the inconvenience and economic losses incurred from the brownout.
• Environmental threat of coal plants, should they be considered as options.
“What Mindoro needs are fast solutions to the energy problem which can be acted upon by people in the communities themselves with the help and support of local decision-makers, through the use of roof-mounted grid-tie or hybrid solar PV systems to reduce the load of local electric cooperatives and stabilize the local grid eventually,” Ayco said.
Ayco said that the households can install solar PV systems on their rooftop, connect all these systems and share to the grid the unused or excess electricity through the Net Metering System. In the end, this would stabilize the grid and reduce the energy supply deficit.
It is important, he said, that the community gets involved in the efforts to improve the power supply situation on the island.
“The people of Mindoro can easily participate in implementing solutions to the power problem by calling on the local governments to sell or lease solar PV systems to residences and commercial buildings as a joint LGU-WeGen economic enterprise. This is certain to facilitate easier access and use of cheap solar energy and speed up implementation,” he said.
Ayco said installing solar PV systems in communities can be donewithout additional financial burden to the LGU by accessing government loan facilities. This, he said, will remove any project financing barrier.
“Instead of one large power plant to supply the electricity needs of Mindoro, hundreds of small solar installations which are integrated into one system through Net Metering can be built. This will remove concentration risk and it is more efficient,” he said.
He also that going for a community-based solar solution will help remote and isolated barangays of Mindoro. He mentioned that similar projects were done in Romblon.
“Our approach can follow the ‘community solar’ concept wherein systems are owned by the Barangay Power Association (BAPA); the solar installation is shared by the community.
The primary purpose of community solar is to allow members of a community the opportunity to share the benefits of solar power even if they cannot or prefer not to install solar panels on their property,” he explained.
Ayco pointed out LGUs should strengthen their efforts to implement the provisions of RA 11285 or the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act of 2019, specifically Section 8 that states that
“All energy end users shall use every energy resource efficiently and promote the development and utilization of new and alternative energy efficient technologies and systems, including renewable energy technologies and systems across sectors in compliance with the declared policies of this act.”