BUTUAN CITY — Power supply in Mindanao is expected to stabilize starting next month due to the improving water supply in Lake Lanao where the five Agus hydroelectric power plants are located, as well as the Pulangi 4 hydroelectric power plants in Maramag, Bukidnon, as rains started to pour.

Both Agus plants and Pulangi plants will give 70% power supply to the Mindanao grid if the water level reaches the 701-meter water line.

Ma. Cynthia Manrique, head, Revenue and Regulatory Affairs of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), and Rico Marave, head, Network Planning Division of the NGCP revealed this during the “Forum on Ancillary Service.”

In the same forum, the NGCP explained the dynamics of its billing and charging procedures.

The two officials said the NGCP bills and collects ancillary services charges from its direct customers then remits these collections to the ancillary services provider per Ancillary Services Procurement Agreement (ASPA) approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC). As the collecting agent, NGCP does not get revenues from the said fees.

“Transmission rates per se have remained stable in the past few months,” they said.

However, charges for ancillary services on the other hand, have increased from R77/kW in December 2009 when the supplying power barges (PB) 117 and 118 were still owned by the National Power Corp. (Napocor) to around R607/kW in April, 2010.

This billed ancillary service charges have drawn reaction from Mindanao’s 33 electric cooperatives and other major players in the business community, thus they urgently wrote a letter of reconsideration to the ERC. It was gathered that four other electric cooperatives in Mindanao filed charges in the local court against the NGCP on the increased of transmission rate or ancillary services charges imposed on electric cooperatives.

To date, the NGCP billed ancillary service charges now reach up to P1.402 billion.

NGCP officials explained that ancillary services charges in Mindanao are based on prevailing world market prices for fuel used in running the power barges which supply the ancillary services.