NGCP: China incapable of controlling power grid
Credit to Author: Jordeene B. Lagare| Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 17:02:49 +0000
THE National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) assured the public on Wednesday that China is incapable of taking over the country’s power grid after it was reported that the East Asian country can take control of the transmission network through one of its state-owned companies.
In a statement, the power grid operator — a consortium of Henry Sy Jr.’s Monte Oro Grid Resources Corp., Robert Coyiuto Jr.’s Calaca High Power Corp. and the Beijing-run State Grid Corp. of China (SGCC) — said the first two had a combined 60-percent controlling stake and the third, only 40 percent.
“There is nothing to be alarmed about the stake [of SGCC] in NGCP, as its investment is limited only to being a technical adviser,” NGCP President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Anthony Almeda said.
“SGCC [may serve] only as the technical adviser of the consortium, but the management and the control of NGCP, including its systems operation, are exclusively exercised by Filipinos,” he added.
The consortium holds a 25-year concession contract and a 50-year franchise to operate the country’s power transmission network by virtue of Republic Act 9511, signed on Jan. 15, 2009.
Almeda’s assurance came after several senators expressed concern that the power grid could be compromised because of SGCC’s participation in the consortium.
Only authorized Filipino technical experts can control the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (Scada), the system which controls the power grid, according to the NGCP chief.
“By default, Scada is disconnected from the virtual private network (VPN). Thus, remote users cannot connect to Scada,” Almeda explained.
“VPN access may only be granted to the Filipino CEO in an emergency situation and only after undergoing a secure and confidential approval process.”
Since operations commenced in 2009, the approval process for VPN access has not been invoked and no remote access has been granted.
Moreover, the company’s Systems Operation (SO) Datacenter is equipped with biometric access controls that allow only authorized NGCP personnel to enter, apart from the Scada workstations and servers that have been secured by firewalls and layers of authentication systems to block unauthorized access.
Almeda has invited legislators and an independent party to visit NGCP facilities to see how the power grid is managed and operated.
“We [will be] happy to welcome our senators and congressmen, as well as an independent third party, to visit our facilities in order to dispel any security concerns that had been raised these past few days.” he said.