Updated
By Myrna Velasco
Millions of Filipino
consumers suffered from three-hour rotational brownouts enforced in various
areas in Luzon, including Metro Manila, that persisted for 13 hours from 9 a.m.
to 10 p.m. Friday.
As of mid-day on
Friday, 1.38 million customers were already affected by brownouts in the
franchise area of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) alone; except for the
customers of electric cooperatives who were equally affected with power
interruptions after five power plants in the experienced forced outages.
Energy Secretary
Alfonso G. Cusi called for an “emergency meeting” with the generation companies
(GenCos) and other relevant industry stakeholders on Thursday night, but as of
this writing, no announcements were made yet as to the matters discussed in
that gathering.
By 9 a.m., the country’s biggest power utility firm Meralco has already started
implementing manual load dropping (MLD) or rolling brownouts in various areas
until 10 p.m.
In Metro Manila, major
cities and municipalities were affected by the rotational brownouts –
widespread through Quezon City, Manila, Valenzuela, Caloocan, Las Piñas,
Muntinlupa, Parañaque, Taguig, Pasay, Marikina, Pasig, Makati, and Mandaluyong.
Outside of Metro
Manila, the provinces plunged into darkness were Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite,
Laguna, Batangas, and Quezon – and the extremity of power interruptions was felt
starting 12 noon, according to the advisory of Meralco.
According to Meralco
Spokesperson Joe Zaldarriaga, the other areas to experience electricity service
interruptions are timed for announcements after every three hours – with the
succeeding ones at the timeframes of 3 p.m.; 6 p.m. with the last duration at 9
p.m.
The Meralco executive explained that there had been no power supply available –
and even their call for interruptible loads or for consumers with generating
sets to switch on their facilities had already been fully exhausted.
System operator
National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), in its advisory, expressly
stated that the grid was already on “generation deficiency” or lack of supply
and had “zero contingency reserve” because of the series of forced outages of
power plants.
The same generating
facilities were still on unplanned outages as of Friday: the 150-megawatt unit
2 of San Miguel Consolidated Power Corp. (SCPC) or Limay plant; 647MW unit 1 of
the Sual coal-fired power facility also of the San Miguel group; 150MW unit 2
of South Luzon Power Generation Corp of the Consunji group; 420MW Pagbilao-3
plant of Aboitiz Power and TeaM Energy Philippines; and the 135MW South Luzon
Thermal Energy Corp (SLTEC) of the Ayala group.
Power facilities on de-rated capacities or with un-optimized electricity
generation include unit 2 of the Calaca coal-fired plant of the Consunji group;
and unit 1 of the Malaya thermal facility of government-owned Power Sector
Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation.
Aside from the 13 hours
of red alerts or brownout conditions in Luzon, NGCP also raised a yellow alert
for the rest of the day until 11:00 p.m. or close to midnight. Based on NGCP
data, 1,502 megawatts had been out from the system due to forced outages of
power plants; while additional 250MW had been due to capacity de-rating of the
other plants.
NGCP’s forecast
similarly indicated that peak demand on Friday (April 12) reached 10,334
megawatts; while available capacity just stood at 10,220MW – thus leaving an
almost nil reserve of 114MW.
In the Wholesale
Electricity Spot Market (WESM), prices have been rising at P26 to P36 per
kilowatt hour (kWh) starting at trading intervals of 9:00 a.m. onwards.
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