Closing down power plants is not the business of NGCP

OpinionPhilippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 21:36:00 03/22/2011 THIS REFERS to the news item titled “Mindanao areas face new power interruptions.” (Inquirer, 3/16/11) The article stated in part that “Power consumers in some Mindanao areas should expect little relief from the summer heat as the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) has announced it will shut down an important power-generating facility” and that “Guya said NGCP explained that it needed to remove a buildup of silt in the turbines of its Pulangui plant in Bukidnon.” NGCP does not own or operate Pulangi or any other power generating plant. NGCP does not shut down power plants; it merely coordinates the maintenance schedule of all power plants connected to the power grid by preparing an annual Grid Operating Program. The owners and operators of the power plants are the ones who submit their maintenance schedules and NGCP only suggests a schedule that will have minimal impact on the power grid. For example, the maintenance schedule of the Napocor/PSALM-owned Pulangi Hydro-Electric Plant in Mindanao was moved from March to April 2011 to make the shutdown coincide with the Holy Week, when system demand is very low. Based on projections from NGCP’s System Operations, even with the shutdown of Pulangi, there will be no generation deficiency in April and there will still be considerable reserves to prevent power interruptions—provided no other power plants are shut down or made unavailable for some reason by their owners/operators. In cases where the power supply from the plants is not enough to address the demands of power customers connected to the grid, NGCP implements load-shedding, based on the allocation or matrix of load to be dropped that is prepared by the generators or power plants themselves, not NGCP. This load-shedding—in the form of power interruptions—is the one referred to by the Davao del Sur Electric Cooperative (Dasureco) in the news article. May we take this opportunity to assure the public that NGCP will continue to do its best as the transmission service provider and system operator. —CYNTHIA D. PEREZ-ALABANZA, spokesperson/adviser for external affairs, National Grid Corporation of the Philippines