Updated
By Myrna Velasco
The Luzon grid plunged
back into the tormenting red alert conditions, the state when it teeters into
power interruptions or rotating brownouts, as power reserves razed to negative
levels anew on Friday.
System operator
National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) declared red alert
condition in the grid for six hours from 10:01 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday,
although as of press time no brownouts or service interruptions had been
implemented yet in the franchise area of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco).
“As of 1 p.m.,
red alert was still in effect. However, no manual load dropping (MLD) circuits
have been dropped yet, (while) interruptible load program (ILP) is in effect,”
Meralco stated in its advisory to the media.
MLD refers to the phase
when a power utility would already need to manually schedule power
interruptions or rotating brownouts within its service area.
The ILP, on the other, is a government-underpinned program that calls on
entities with self-generating power assets to switch on these facilities so
they can help ease demand from the grid when there is extreme tightening of
available electricity supply.
NGCP similarly alerted
consumers that “yellow alert” state in the grid had been raised from 8:01 to 10
a.m.; then 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.; and the last stretch at 06:01 p.m. to 10 p.m. for
the evening peak demand hours.
At least five power
plants had been reported on forced outages, and this resulted in 1,037
megawatts of capacity being taken out from the system. These generating assets
include one 300MW unit of the Calaca coal-fired plant; 150MW unit 4 of the
Limay plant of SMC Consolidated Power Corp. (SCPC); 316MW unit 1 GNPower plant;
150MW unit 1 of the SCPC facility; and 121MW unit 2 of South Luzon Thermal
Energy Cop. (SLTEC) plant.
The power plants on de-rated capacities were: the Kalayaan hydropower plant;
Binga and Ambuklao hydro generating facilities; unit 2 of the Masinloc
coal-fired plant; unit 1 of SLTEC plant; unit 4 of the Limay thermal facility;
and unit 2 of the SCPC plant.
Capacity de-rating in
power plants refers to a circumstance when a generating unit has level of
electricity production lower than its rated capacity. For the hydro facilities,
that has already been expected especially at the thick of summer months due to
lower water elevation at the dams.
This year is
anticipated to have a cycle of extended El Niño, hence, temperatures are still
scorching even if the calendar already strikes at mid-year.
The recurrence of red
and yellow alerts in Luzon grid mirrored May power supply debacle.
Nevertheless, power consumers have been spared from feared rate spikes because
replacement power capacity of plants on forced outages had been tossed as their
cost burden, instead of passing them on to the electricity ratepayers.
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