MANILA, Philippines—Power consumers in Luzon may continue to suffer at least one- to two-hour rotating brownouts on Monday unless repairs at the two coal-fired power plants are completed at the weekend.
“There will be no brownouts during the weekend. But we need to ensure that supply will be sufficient by Monday or we will still have these rotating brownouts by Monday,” said Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras.
The rotating brownouts started at 10 a.m. yesterday because of the emergency shutdown of a unit of the 1,200-megawatt Sual coal facility in Pangasinan and one unit of the 700-MW Pagbilao power plant in Quezon, said the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).
These facilities bogged down in the early hours of Friday because of boiler and condenser tube leaks.
Reduced capacity
Aggravating the power supply shortage was the reduced capacity of the 344MW Magat hydropower facility, which was running only a fifth of its capacity at 85MW as of Friday.
In a press briefing Friday, NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza said the Luzon grid lost 382MW from the outage of the Pagbilao unit; 647MW from the Sual unit; and 258MW from the reduced Magat generating capacity.
This caused Friday’s rotating brownouts, which lasted from one to four hours in Metro Manila and nearby provinces like Batangas, Cavite, Bulacan, Rizal and Quezon. But the so-called regulating and spinning reserves mitigated the impact of the outages, trimming the power supply deficit to only 111MW.
As there has been no advisory on whether the repairs on the Sual and Pagbilao plants will be completed over the weekend, there is a chance that the rotating brownouts will continue until Monday, when peak demand was estimated to reach 6,748MW.
“The owners of Sual (Team Energy) said they had a start-up of their power plants, but we are not yet assured if these plants will not bog down again. We need to have something to back up supply just in case Sual will still not run. Pagbilao has yet to inform us when it will be online. So, mitigating measures will have to be there,” Almendras explained.
One of these mitigating measures is to tap the 350MW unit of the 650MW Malaya thermal power plant, a standby power facility.
Power interruptions
“The entry of this plant is expected to reduce the length of power interruptions to only an hour during the peak of 6 to 7 p.m. If Malaya fails to go online, however, outages are expected to last for two to three hours,” Alabanza added.
According to Almendras, if they can convince the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) to allow the Magat hydropower plant to use part of the water intended for irrigation for power generation instead, this would result in an additional 55MW for the Luzon grid.
“We are holding talks with the NIA to allow the dispatch 55MW from Magat,” he said.
But Alabanza noted that these mitigating measures will only cut the length of the rotating brownouts.
What is really crucial for power supply to normalize is to have the Sual and Pagbilao units operating again by Monday, she said.
This means that the repairs have to be completed over the weekend so that the facilities will have time to gradually ramp up capacities over the next two days.
“There will be no brownouts during the weekend. But we need to ensure that supply will be sufficient by Monday or we will still have these rotating brownouts by Monday,” said Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras.
The rotating brownouts started at 10 a.m. yesterday because of the emergency shutdown of a unit of the 1,200-megawatt Sual coal facility in Pangasinan and one unit of the 700-MW Pagbilao power plant in Quezon, said the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).
These facilities bogged down in the early hours of Friday because of boiler and condenser tube leaks.
Reduced capacity
Aggravating the power supply shortage was the reduced capacity of the 344MW Magat hydropower facility, which was running only a fifth of its capacity at 85MW as of Friday.
In a press briefing Friday, NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza said the Luzon grid lost 382MW from the outage of the Pagbilao unit; 647MW from the Sual unit; and 258MW from the reduced Magat generating capacity.
This caused Friday’s rotating brownouts, which lasted from one to four hours in Metro Manila and nearby provinces like Batangas, Cavite, Bulacan, Rizal and Quezon. But the so-called regulating and spinning reserves mitigated the impact of the outages, trimming the power supply deficit to only 111MW.
As there has been no advisory on whether the repairs on the Sual and Pagbilao plants will be completed over the weekend, there is a chance that the rotating brownouts will continue until Monday, when peak demand was estimated to reach 6,748MW.
“The owners of Sual (Team Energy) said they had a start-up of their power plants, but we are not yet assured if these plants will not bog down again. We need to have something to back up supply just in case Sual will still not run. Pagbilao has yet to inform us when it will be online. So, mitigating measures will have to be there,” Almendras explained.
One of these mitigating measures is to tap the 350MW unit of the 650MW Malaya thermal power plant, a standby power facility.
Power interruptions
“The entry of this plant is expected to reduce the length of power interruptions to only an hour during the peak of 6 to 7 p.m. If Malaya fails to go online, however, outages are expected to last for two to three hours,” Alabanza added.
According to Almendras, if they can convince the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) to allow the Magat hydropower plant to use part of the water intended for irrigation for power generation instead, this would result in an additional 55MW for the Luzon grid.
“We are holding talks with the NIA to allow the dispatch 55MW from Magat,” he said.
But Alabanza noted that these mitigating measures will only cut the length of the rotating brownouts.
What is really crucial for power supply to normalize is to have the Sual and Pagbilao units operating again by Monday, she said.
This means that the repairs have to be completed over the weekend so that the facilities will have time to gradually ramp up capacities over the next two days.
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