Monday, February 22, 2016

Pagudpud wind plant disconnected from the grid



by Myrna Velasco February 21, 2016

The 81-megawatt Pagudpud wind farm has been disconnected from Luzon power system since Thursday (February 18) due to the tripping of the interconnection facility supporting its operations and wheeling of capacity to the grid.
In a statement to the media, project operator North Luzon Renewables has noted that the technical glitch in the transmission facility was just uncovered Friday (February 19).
“It was determined in the early morning of Friday that two of its transmission towers in Barangay Tadao in the municipality of Pasuquin, Ilocos Norte has toppled.”
The project firm stated that initial investigation established “that explosives were used to take down the transmission towers.”
Apparently, this is the first major attack reported on a wind farm; and also considerably a preliminary one for Luzon grid as assaults with the use of explosives mostly targeted transmission towers in Mindanao.
Nevertheless, North Luzon Renewables qualified that “no one has claimed responsibility at this time” – referring to the incident.
The company added “there were no fatalities or injuries related to the incident,” and the company has not also given timeframe as of press time, on when the wind farm can get back to normal operations.
It just specified that it “will continue to work with local and national law enforcement agencies, as well as the local government, to continue investigating this incident.”
The Pagudpud wind plant is included in the first-mover projects incentivized with feed-in-tariff amounting to P8.53 per kilowatt hour.

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