With one to two-hour rotating brownouts plaguing Luzon grid anew, the pressure on newly-installed Energy Secretary Jose C. Ibazeta is also getting more intense, hence prompting him to lay down proposed solutions to be carried out in the coming weeks leading to the critical period of elections.

Since Tuesday (April 6), the Luzon grid was again placed on red alert due to generation deficiency, resulting in rolling brownouts affecting Metro Manila and the rest of areas served by utility giant Manila Electric Company.

Ibazeta said the shutdown of plants triggered fresh round of supply deficiency, citing Sual and Sta Rita facilities. But he indicated that capacity for the biggest island grid has been assured during the May 10 elections and the subsequent days of canvassing period.

He stressed that the more problematic situation is still in Mindanao, and that is the area where fixing-front will be enhanced and prioritized.

Some of the short-term measures lined up for Mindanao, according to Ibazeta, will be the implementation of de-loading program in coordination with embedded generators and to push for rehabilitation of the Iligan diesel power plant so it can run full blast during the elections. If the government succeeds in bringing the Iligan generating units close to their installed capacity, they may contribute up to 114 megawatts to the grid’s supply.

“For Mindanao, I am confident that during the elections, even for a period of three days, we will be okay,” the new energy chief stressed.

Many politicians are now pushing the issue that if the brownouts in Mindanao won’t be resolved come election time, this may mar the results and they are already predicting a worst case scenario of election failure.

For Luzon grid, Ibazeta vowed of closer coordination with the power generators to ensure that all plants will be running during the poll exercises next month.

“We just have to make sure that the plants are running well. We have to look at the embedded generators. The plan really is to undertake all maintenance shutdowns so all of these will be over by election time,” he stressed.