Power project sponsors eyeing to add up capacity for Luzon can gain more leeway planning and bringing their proposed facilities into fruition given forecasts that the need for additional supply in the grid may still be stretched until 2014.

Nevertheless, given the long gestation period for power projects before they can be set on stream, it has been noted that processes leading to the project’s implementation may already start between this 2010 to 2011.

In the interim, the comfort level for supply of the country’s largest power grid would be the uprating and rehabilitation of the privatized plants of the National Power Corporation (NPC), which is generally seen by the industry as a capacity shoring-up measure for the next 2 to 3 years.

Absent an updated and accessible Power Development Plan emanating from the Department of Energy (DOE), power industry players have been relying heavily on their own feasibility studies as guide for their respective investment plans.

“My own estimates when new capacity will be needed in Luzon is around 2014,” Aboitiz Power senior vice president Luis Miguel Aboitiz has opined.

Greenfield capacity for Mindanao, in the same vein, is seen needed by 2014; while the completion of the three coal-fired power projects in Visayas will momentarily provide level of stability in the grid’s supply.

Aboitiz echoed that the two fastest ways to supply additional power would be through: privatization of the NPC plants; and the start of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) in the Visayas.

By the assumption of Philippine Independent Power Producers Association (PIPPA) president Ernesto Pantangco, “there is definitely no current supply shortage in Luzon and shortages in peak power is still expected in 2012-2013.”

Citing the year 2009 peak demand of 6,400 megawatts as reference, Pantangco indicated that Luzon grid will still have enough room to plan for greenfield or new power projects.

He proposed though that government must start working now on improving the business climate as well as on the implementation of policies so capital will flow as they are needed.

“What is required is political will to converge all of the government agencies’ approval processes and coordinate power investments with local government units,” Pantangco stressed.

In Mindanao’s case, the PIPPA chief executive noted that the problem is more on the reliability of transmission lines supplying power from Cagayan de Oro to the economically-burgeoning Davao and General Santos areas.