Steag shuts down Mindanao coal power plant

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TUESDAY, 02 OCTOBER 2012 19:21 PAUL ANTHONY A. ISLA / REPORTER

STEAG State Power Inc. (SPI), the partnership among Steag GmbH of Germany, Aboitiz Power Corp., and La Filipina Uygongco Corp. is scheduled to go on preventive maintenance shutdown for its two 105 megawatt (MW) units this month and next month.

Jerome Soldevilla, SPI communications officer, said the first 105-MW unit will go on preventive maintenance shutdown from Oct. 6 to Nov. 4, while the second 105-MW unit will go on preventive maintenance shutdown from Oct. 29 to Nov. 10.

Soldevilla said this will be the first time for SPI to undertake such a relatively long planned plant outage in six years after start of full commercial operations beginning on Nov.15, 2006.

He said carrying out the maintenance works as planned and scheduled will bring in long-term benefits to the Mindanao power consumers through the power plant’s operational reliability.

Soldevilla said the timing of the preventive maintenance shutdown took into consideration the power plant’s operations and maintenance guidelines and the projected electricity demand-supply condition of Mindanao during the period.

He said the overarching goal is to minimize the possible adverse impact of power-supply shortfall on the island.

SPI’s Mindanao power plant has, Soldevilla said, sustained an impressive availability rate of 93.3 percent and a low unplanned outage rate of less than 1 percent during its first six years of operation.

Soldevilla said SPI is confident it can still achieve a high availability rate of 91 percent by year-end even with the relatively long outage scheduled from October to November this year.

SPI’s power plant is considered as the most modern and the biggest in Mindanao on a per-unit capacity, he said.

“SPI’s plant operation since 2006 expanded the island’s electricity generation mix and has thus far contributed to the stability of the grid. It has delivered more than 8.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, representing about 20 percent of Mindanao’s total power supply,” he said.

Soldevilla said the planned preventive maintenance shutdown has been approved by the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) as recommended by the Mindanao Grid Operations and Maintenance Planning Group composed of  NGCP, the National Power Corp.  and its independent power producers.

SPI is a special-purpose company established to build, operate and maintain Mindanao’s first coal-fired power plant.

(With Butch Enerio)    source