‘NGCP on track to finish MVIP by yearend’
By Lenie Lectura – October 13, 2023
from Business Mirror
The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) is on track to fully complete its Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Project (MVIP) by the end of the year.
The grid operator has energized the MVIP with an initial load of 22.5 megawatts (MW) being transferred from Mindanao to Visayas in April this year.
“The power flow from Mindanao to Visayas started in April 2023. In June, we finished another component, the Kauswagan-Lala 230 kilovolt (kV) line. In September, we finished Dumanjug 230 kV line.
We still have remaining works for certain components that we expect to finish this month. The final component that needs to be energized, we’re targeting before the end of the year,” said NGCP Spokesperson Atty. Cynthia Alabanza.
Through the P52-billion MVIP, the Mindanao grid will be linked to the Visayas grid via a high voltage direct current (HVDC) system.
The MVIP is comprised of a 184 circuit-kilometer (ckm) HVDC submarine transmission line connecting the power grids of Mindanao and Visayas with a transfer capacity of 450MW and is expandable to as much as 900MW.
It was certified as an Energy Project of National Significance in 2018 and was initially targeted for completion by December 2020 but was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent quarantine restrictions across the country.
NGCP has built a total of 3,729 circuit kilometers of transmission lines and 28 substations and has installed 31,190 megavolt amperes of transformer capacity in the past 14 years.
Since 2009, NGCP said it had spent P300 billion in upgrading the country’s transmission system.
All of NGCP’s projects are detailed in its 10-year Transmission Development Plan (TDP). In the next 13 years, the grid operator is committed to invest approximately P440 billion across 211 projects to support the country’s growing electricity demand and to make the country’s power backbone continuously reliable.
NGCP presented its TDP for 2023 to 2040 to the Energy Regulatory Commission. It is a strategic plan formulated to address the country’s transmission infrastructure needs and outlines the necessary expansion and upgrade of the transmission system to ensure the reliable and efficient delivery of electricity across the country. The TDP also includes the grid operator’s roadmap to help achieve the country’s generation targets, which is notably driven by renewable energy (RE) sources. These generation targets align with the target of the Philippine Energy Plan (PEP), which seeks to increase RE generation to 35 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040. Implementing the PEP will require updating transmission lines to efficiently transmit additional supply to distribution utilities.
