Having the impression of both struggling from being a third-world country in the South East Asia, now, let us have a brief look on the energy planning of Philippines and Thailand.

While Philippines is continuously promoting for higher utilization of indigenous natural gas sources for power generation, Thailand, on the other hand, has started to reduce its dependency to its Natural Gas resource due to potential depletion of its gas reserves in a few decades. Thailand’s electricity source is largely dependent on natural gas which is 66% of its energy mix.

In the Philippines, roughly 40% of its base load plants in Luzon are natural gas fueled. Malampaya gas reserves is forecasted to last for until approximately 20 years but due to the high utilization of natural gas plants after the start of WESM, extending its years of supply might become less probable.

Both countries have almost similar electricity demand growth of 5% annually.

Like Thailand, Philippines is also looking for Coal and Nuclear as a viable energy sources. However, due to growing environmental concern and continuously increasing price of coal, this option might not be cost effective and easy to implement. Nuclear, on the other hand, still has a strong social and political opposition due to safety issues.

Meanwhile, unlike Philippines, Thailand can easily source its electricity requirement from its neighboring countries like Laos and Malaysia if crisis occurred. Thailand already has power purchase agreements with a number of its neighbors, such as a 300 MW power link in Malaysia. Recently, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Laos, where Thailand will buy 5000 MW of Hydro electric Power by 2015.

The greater advantage of the Philippines over Thailand is that Philippines has an abundant sources of Geothermal Energy. However, its current capacity is still at minimal quantity or roughly only 10% of the total base load plants capacity. Industry sources showed that the relatively low utilization of the Geothermal Plants is to due the following reasons;

1. Continuous degradation of NPC owned geothermal power plants because of low budget for plant’s repair and maintenance.
2. Not full utilization of Geothermal Power Plants in Tiwi and Bacman due to constraints in Transmission line connecting Bicol to the rest of Luzon Grid.
3. Not full utilization of Geothermal Plants in Leyte due to constraints in transmission line connecting Leyte to Cebu and Leyte to Luzon.
4. Due to existing power supply contracts of other base load plants, Geothermal Steam supply for power plants has to be blown-off to the atmosphere during off-peak periods and thus wasting a precious energy source.

The Philippines is also looking at other indigenous sources of energy like wind, biomass, and jathropa, but its cost effectiveness, financial and technical viability, and reliability to supply a continuous demand for electricity is still a major concern.

Notice that the government has a big role, and definitely, can do something, to properly plan the energy sources development in the Philippines. And since electric power not only lights our home but also powered our economy, proper planning is really necessary.

Ref:
PIE Magazine October 2007 issue