Friday, October 17, 2014

PSALM says only one unit of Ilijan plant available next year

Business World Online
Posted on October 17, 2014 07:26:00 PM

EVEN IF the 1,200-megawatt (MW) Ilijan power plant utilizes pure diesel in 2015, its full availability could not be assured given all the preparatory activities that have to be undertaken to accommodate the fuel shift.

The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) pointed this out in response to the Energy department’s claim that the power plant in Batangas operates at derated capacity when it uses biodiesel.

The Ilijan combined-cycle power plant -- composed of two 600-MW units -- originally runs on natural gas coming from the Malampaya gas field but shifts to biodiesel when gas is not available.

Given the scheduled shutdown of Malampaya from March 15 to April 14 next year, the power facility will end up using its alternative available fuel for its continued operations.

“The 1,200-megawatt (MW) Ilijan combined-cycle power plant’s proposed fuel shift from biodiesel to pure diesel will not provide assurance that the load of the plant’s Block 1 would increase from 420 MW to 600 MW whenever the natural gas supply from the Malampaya is not available,” Emmanuel R. Ledesma, Jr., PSALM president and chief executive officer, said in a statement on Friday.

“In any case, this shift cannot be completed in time for the Malampaya shutdown,” he added.

Mr. Ledesma also pointed out that only one unit of Ilijan would be available in 2015, since the other unit will be on planned maintenance outage from March 20 to April 20.

He bucked the proposal to shift to pure diesel from biodiesel, claiming that this could not guarantee that the facility can operate at its full capacity.

“This shift cannot guarantee the increase in capacity given that the last performance test of the plant using liquid fuel was conducted 13 years ago,” Mr. Ledesma said.

At the same time, he noted that this fuel shift would require preparatory activities, which would take around six months.

These activities include the liquid operation of Ilijan for three days to consume the current biodiesel inventory; and cleaning of the fuel tanks to be undertaken by plant operator KEPCO Ilijan Corp.

PSALM would also have to procure a contractor for the removal of sludge and sale of the oil. At the same time, gas turbine will still have to be prepared for pure diesel operations.

The state-run firm also needs to conduct another procurement for the supply of 60 million liters of pure diesel, since the government contracts the asset’s alternative fuel on a yearly basis.

“There is also a need to conduct a pure diesel tuning, stability operation and performance test, which will take at least eight days,” Mr. Ledesma said.

“Hence, PSALM recommends the continued use of biodiesel for Ilijan to ensure continuous power supply during the 2015 Malampaya shutdown,” he added.

Besides Ilijan, PSALM last week also said that the full availability of the 650-MW Malaya thermal power plant in Rizal could not be assured for the summer months of next year given some technical difficulties.

While not being highlighted as a major solution to the looming power problem next year, the Malaya plant was regarded as a potential contributor to avoid crippling outages next year.

The Energy department estimates some 900 MW will be needed -- covering the deficit and required reserves -- to prevent potentially crippling outages between March and June next year.

President Benigno S.C. Aquino III last month invoked the power crisis provision of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001, asking both chambers of Congress to authorize the government to contract additional capacities for summer.

While a joint resolution has yet to be issued, the Senate and House of Representatives manifested that the government may have to settle with a watered-down version of the authority needed.

The House Energy committee hopes to secure by the end of the month plenary approval of a proposed joint resolution containing various options the Executive can tap, while its Senate counterpart has opposed such flexibility and instead kept on pushing for the interruptible load program (ILP).

The ILP is a measure that allows big consumers to run their own generating sets to ease power demand in exchange for compensation

Business groups earlier this month expressed confidence that up to 700 MW can be enrolled under the ILP before the Dec. 19 deadline that the DoE set for the participants to voluntarily sign up under the program. -- Claire-Ann Marie C. Feliciano   source

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