By Lenie Lectura - October 15, 2019
THE Luzon grid was placed on “yellow
alert” for six hours on Monday, with over 4,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity
shaved off from the grid mainly due to unplanned outage of several power plants.
Data from the Department of Energy
(DOE) showed that a total of 4,744 MW of capacity was unavailable, prompting
the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) to issue the yellow alert
notice effective 10:01 a.m. until 4 p.m.
A yellow alert is issued when
operating reserves have dropped below the required 647 MW contingency in Luzon,
or equivalent to the largest unit in Luzon, which is the 647 MW coal-fired
power plant in Sual, Pangasinan.
“We are closely monitoring the
situation. The DOE’s power bureau is on top of this,” said Energy
Undersecretary Felix William Fuentebella said in a text message.
Unplanned
outage
Avion natural gas plant units 1 (50
MW) and 2 (50 MW), Sual (647 MW), San Jose biomass plant (12 MW), GN Power
Mariveles coal plant (345 MW) and Tiwi geothermal plant unit 1(60 MW) underwent
forced outage.
The two units of Avion went offline
since August due to gas turbine leak, while GN Power coal plant was unavailable
since September 20.
The geothermal plant of AboitizPower
has been has not been delivering power since November last year.
Sual and San Jose biomass plants
underwent emergency shutdown on October 11 and 13, respectively, due to
technical glitches.
While Malaya power plant unit 1 (150
MW), MakBan (55 MW) geothermal plant and the power facilities Ilijan blocks A
(600 MW) and B (600 MW), San Gabriel (420 MW), which source fuel from the
Malampaya gas facility are on Outside Management Control (OMC) outage.
“An Outside Management Control
Outage is an outage wherein the cause is beyond the control of the generation
company, and has not resulted from planning error or negligence,” according to
Fuentebella.
For geothermal plants, he explained
that the term OMC means the issue is the lack of steam. For gas plants, there
was lack of gas supply due to the Malampaya shutdown. For Malaya, Fuentebella
said, “it’s a must-run plant, hence it also falls within the term.”
In all, these power plants that are
on forced outage and on OMC outage make up 2,955MW, or 62.3 percent, of the
total unavailable capacity.
Malampaya
shutdown
The gas facility, which supplies 40
percent of Manila Electric Co.’s (Meralco) requirement, was not able to fuel
the gas plants from October 12 to 15.
The gas facility fuels the following
gas plants: the 1,000-MW Santa Rita, the 500-MW San Lorenzo, the 1,200-MW
Ilijan, the 97-MW Avion and the 414-MW San Gabriel.
The operator of the gas facility
said the four-day shutdown would allow engineering maintenance works at both
onshore gas plant and offshore platform.
“The Malampaya scheduled maintenance
shutdown activities started last Saturday morning and progressing as planned
until tomorrow evening. Gas delivery to customers start early morning of
Wednesday,” an official of Shell Exploration BV, which leads the Malampaya
consortium, said via text message.
Meralco head of utility economics
Lawrence Fernandez said that while the Ilijan plant and San Gabriel
plant (420 MW) are on shutdown during the period, the Santa Rita and San
Lorenzo power plants will run on liquid fuel and continue to supply power to
the grid.
“We have called on ILP
[interruptible load program] participants to prepare to be activated, if the
supply situation deteriorates, but we hope that no other generator goes on
‘unplanned’ outage at this time,” he said in an interview.
Meralco partly sources its
requirements from the Santa Rita, San Lorenzo, San Gabriel plants of First Gas
Corp. and from South Premiere Power Corp.’s Ilijan plant. The utility firm does
not have a power-supply agreement with First Gen’s Avion plant.
Derated
capacity
Contributing the to the grid’s thin
power reserves are the derated capacities of SEM-Calaca from 300 MW to 200 MW,
Angat hydro plant from 200 MW to 160 MW and the Pantabangan hydro plant (120
MW).
The DOE also recorded 1,349 MW of
derated capacity from various power plants. The agency did not provide a list
of these plants. In all, 1,609 MW of capacity was not delivered to the grid
because of derated power plant capacity.
Also, included in the DOE data is
the planned outage of CBK hydro plant unit 3 (184 MW).
’Not
critical‘
Earlier, a DOE official said the
Malampaya shutdown would not affect the grid’s integrity.
“We are coordinating with
the system operator, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines. They have
suggestions. It’s not critical because demand is not that big in October. It
will be well managed. There are gas plants that will run on diesel,
condensate,” said DOE Director Mario Marasigan.
Energy Assistant Secretary Redentor
Delola, in a text message, said the Luzon grid will have sufficient
reserves for the rest of the year due to decreasing demand and additional
capacities from new power plants coming online.
For Luzon, he cited the 300-MW
Masinloc expansion project which is set to commence this month and the 500-MW
San Buenaventura Power Ltd. project of Meralco Power Gen Corp. Both are
expected to inject power to the grid this month.
SBPL is a partnership between
MGen and New Growth BV, a wholly owned subsidiary of Electricity Generating
Public Co. Ltd. (EGCO Group) of Thailand.
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