Escudero urges stricter DoE, ERC oversight over Gencos

The Department of Energy (DoE) and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) should enforce stricter oversight over power generation companies (Gencos) to ensure their compliance with scheduled outages, Senator Francis Escudero said on Wednesday.

Escudero also stressed the need for gencos to be compelled to provide transparent explanations and justifications for any unplanned outages.

“The DoE and ERC should rein in the gencos to stay true to their scheduled outages and should be required to explain and justify the reasons behind these forced outages,” he said.

Accountability measures

Escudero said accountability measures should be put in place to address any unreasonable or unjustified downtime “resulting from negligence, incompetence or internal faults within the power companies.”

“They should be held accountable for any unreasonable or unjustified outage brought about by their negligence, incompetence, or their own fault,” he stressed.

He added that “no amount of ancillary or stand-by power can guarantee sufficient supply nor be able to stabilize the grid if these forced outages persist unchecked.”

On Tuesday, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines placed the Luzon grid on red and yellow alerts and the Visayas grid on yellow alerts, after 42 power plants either stopped supplying electricity or reduced their output.