Press Release - WIN TRANSCRIPT | Senator Win Gatchalian's interview on ANC's Headstart with Karen Davila on the NGCP Senate probe and cha-cha

Q: I had NGCP on Headstart a day ago. So I want to ask for the overview, let's talk about the whole system, the whole issue. So four days ago, there was a blackout in Panay Island, wherein seven power plants actually tripped, closed, lost power was under maintenance for some reason, one way or another. Three of the biggest including first is that typical, why did that happen?

SEN. WIN: Karen, there are two accountable actors here. Primarily, number one will be the power plant, because if there's no power supply, obviously there'll be disruption in the system. And then number two, the system operator because in cases of aberration, the system operators have full control over what to do. And it has protocols that it should follow in order to not disrupt the entire system. So in this particular case, PEDC went on an unplanned shutdown or a forced shutdown because of technical issues. And that should have been a prompt to NGCP to reduce demand so that they will maintain the integrity or the balance of the entire system. In yesterday's hearing, NGCP insisted that the grid was still under normal state, a technical issue, and basically what they were seeing was, we're still normal. Now, we don't have to do anything, but we're still normal. But when we looked at the definition, under the Philippine grid code, it's no longer in a normal state. In fact, it's in an emergency state. Because one of the plants copped out, one of the plants went down and then that should have prompted NGCP to balance out the grid to prevent a widespread collapse of the system, but they didn't do that. That's why the other plant, the six other plants, tripped because the system was imbalanced or unbalanced anymore.

Q: Okay, that's a very clear explanation. So I want to start first with this. So Panay Energy Development Corporation has three plants. One I believe shut down, and then something at 12 noon. The first one went on maintenance shut down. Am I correct? Another one. These two plants, I think supply was at 83 megawatts roughly. When those two plants of Panay Energy Development Corporation shut down, should NGCP have come in because a third plant which was PCPC shut down and instead of