Power Crisis In Mindanao: ECHEL! Brown-out, anyone?

Today I think about the countless families and households burdened by the irregular and invasive brown-outs. I think about the school children who will have to literally burn candles in order to do their homeworks. And I think about the many people who are left to imagine what could possibly happen to the twists and turns that their favourite telenovela will bring. Alas, they could not as well watch the opening feature of ABS-CBN’s latest offering, Imortal. What a waste! All these because some people in the energy sector could not put their acts together. Surely, we in Mindanao have enough capacity to power all our electricity requirements. To my understanding, the Mindanao grid has a total installed capacity of at least 1, 935 MW, including plants embedded with the distributors. Compare this to the region’s peak demand which on the average could not reach beyond the 1,200 MW mark. Yet, here we are again, confronted with the usual refrain that we the people of Mindanao are tired of hearing – rotating black-outs! True, we are saddled by brown-outs in the middle of the rainy season. Come to think of it. The Lake Lanao in the Province of Lanao del Sur which powers the turbines of the Agus power plants is already under flood watch. Needless to say, there is an excess of water necessary to generate more than 700 MW of electricity from the Agus plants. Add another 200 MW or at least 180MW from the Pulangi power plant in Bukidnon and another 200 MW from the coal-fired power plant in Misamis Oriental. We can also expect another 100 MW from the geothermal Mt. Apo Geothermal in North Cotabato. What I am trying to say is that from these major power plants, we can already have 1,200 MW, good enough to address the peak demand requirement. Yet, again it appears that brown-outs are as certain as night and day. ECHEL! What could have possibly gone wrong? We are not even talking about other available power plants yet. ECHEL!