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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Thursday, February 23, 2017
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BACOLOD City – A consumer group wants the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco) to give an update regarding its power supply contract with Energreen Power Development and Management, Inc.
Much has been discussed about the deal, but the consumers have not heard from the Ceneco Board of Directors, according to Utilities Consumers Alliance of Negros (UCAN) president Father Ernie Larida.
“We would like to know when Energreen started delivering power and how much was delivered,” he wrote Ceneco on Feb. 10.
Not a single Ceneco Board member “stood up for consumer-members” to show objection to Energreen’s contract violations, Larida claimed.
Ceneco already “tried to arrange a couple of meetings with the UCAN … but the UCAN shied away, citing reasons why they cannot attend,” said the cooperative’s General Manager Sulpicio Lagarde Jr.
Power Watch attended one of such meetings, Lagarde said. They were just waiting for the UCAN to set the meeting on a schedule they find convenient, he added.
Energreen — through a diesel plant in Barangay Calumangan, Bago City, Negros Occidental — shall deliver 18.9 megawatts (MW) of “peak and reserve” for 15 years, based on the deal it struck with Ceneco on Aug. 5, 2013.
It hopes to deliver by March this year all the diesel power Ceneco has contracted but will first confer with the cooperative to decide when the contract should start: when the first engine delivered 4.2 MW in May 2016 or during full delivery (all four engines) next month, consultant David Tan previously said.
But Energreen should have started delivering 9 MW on Nov. 26, 2014 provided that all 18.9 MW were delivered on or before Dec. 26 that year, the UCAN previously said, citing a provision of a “supplemental agreement.”
Energreen started delivering 4.2 MW only in May 2016 and gradually delivered 12.6 MW, all from three of the four engines of the diesel-fired power plant.
Tan claimed the delays had something to do with logistics: challenges in getting permits, power plant construction and weather, among others./PN
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