By Alena Mae S. Flores Posted on October 03, 2012 12:01am
Mindanao’s power shortage is seen to worsen this month until early November once the 210-megawatt coal plant in Misamis Oriental goes on maintenance shutdown which could result to 3 to 11 hour brownouts.
STEAG State Power, which operates the power plant through a build-operate-transfer contract, will switch off unit 1 with a capacity of 105 MW from October 6 to November 4, and unit 2 (105 MW) from Oct. 29 to Nov. 10.
But Energy Undersecretary Josefina Asirit said cooperatives without supply contracts with Therma Marine Inc., which owns two power barges in Mindanao with a capacity of 192 MW, will likely bear the brunt of the maintenance shutdown.
Sources said places such as Bukidnon with 8-hour outages face up to 11 hour blackouts.
Asirit said around 140 MW of the barges’ capacity are being utilized and the cooperatives can tap the remaining 52 MW to deal with the coal plant shutdown.
“The impact will be high prices because they will blend TMI rates (which is diesel),” Asirit said, referring to the cooperatives without TMI contracts.
National Grid Corporation of the Philippines spokeswoman Cynthia Alabanza said the shutdown will only result in an average of 2 to 4 hour outages in Mindanao, given bilateral capacities with TMI and all other plants continuing to operate.
Alabanza said only about 105 MW will be lost to the grid except from Oct. 29 to Nov. 4 where demand is expected to be low.
Asirit also said the Agus-Pulangi complex could augment capacities especially with the high rainfall availability and other private utilities can utilize power from their embedded generation facilities.
STEAG is principally owned by Steag GmbH, one of the largest electricity producers in Germany and a leader in clean coal technology and biomass power plants. source
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