By Maria Romero
The Daily Tribune
Tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan-led Manila Electric Company (Meralco) is only several households away from hitting a long-held target to connect all households in its franchise area to the electricity network.
During the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on Tuesday, Meralco president Ray C. Espinosa reported that the Meralco Electrification Program (MEP) reached 99.94 percent.
“We powered more homes, residential customers nearing 6.6 million accounts, posting a growth of four percent. We also powered more businesses as our Commercial and Industrial customer bases rose by 3 percent and 1 percent, respectively,” Espinosa said.
“We powered more lives as we held firm to our commitment to energize communities leading to an electrification rate of 99.94 percent in our franchise area, an improvement over 2019’s 99.59 percent rate,” he added.
For the 13th consecutive year, Meralco outperformed the prescribed regulatory system loss cap recording a System Loss level of only 6.08 percent.
Meralco has earmarked P1.1 billion for the remaining projects under the program that brings light to unserved and underserved areas.
Beyond power lines
As of December 2020, Meralco has energized 296 sites for a 55 percent energization level, with 240 sites now on the construction stage.
Relatedly, Espinosa also disclosed that Meralco invested in more studies to determine appropriate technology to strengthen its grid.
“So we are investing in more studies to determine what could be the appropriate technology we need to invest in to strengthen our grid as well as to make us deal with intermittent energy sources, not just from solar panels but even from the utility-scale renewable energy that we are sourcing,” Espinosa said.
Espinosa pointed out the need to develop innovative technology, such as solar panels, to cut electricity costs in the long run.
Solar power booms
“Many Meralco customers are installing solar PVs in their homes, in their rooftops and this is well supported by Meralco. We have a subsidiary that provides electric rooftop PV services to our customers, even to those outside our franchise area,” he said.
“From a network standpoint, we are mindful of the effect of solar PVs in our network and we are making appropriate measures to make our distribution network compatible with the influx of solar panels into our network.”
Meralco has committed to accelerating its transition to cleaner energy by sourcing 1,500 megawatts (MW) of power requirements from renewable energy sources in the next 5 years.
It also envisions building up to 1,500 MW in utility-scale renewable energy power plants in the next five to seven years.