Mindanao’s rotating brownouts dampen business as power reserves go negative

Inquirer.net
9:01 am | Monday, October 24th, 2011


MANILA, Philippines – With the business climate dimmed by renewed insurgency-related violence, Mindanao’s on-and-off economic boom suffered another dampener this week as rotating brownouts worsened due to a severe drop in the island’s electricity supply.
According to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, which runs the power distribution network in the entire country, electricity supply in Mindanao was short by 81 megawatts of electricity as of Friday, forcing several areas in southern Philippines to go dark intermittently as the national government struggled to control a renewed flare-up of violence in Basilan province, where 19 soldiers from the elite Army Scout Rangers were killed last Wednesday in a clash with rebels from the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The NGCP said it put Mindanao “on red alert” effective 11 a.m. last Wednesday “due to zero contingency reserve brought about by planned outage and reduced capability of power plants.”
According to the NGCP, it lost 105 megawatts of electricity supply because of the shutdown of one of the two generating plants of Steag State Power, Inc. in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental for scheduled maintenance repairs.
The state-owned National Power Corp. has also “derated” or reduced the generating capacity of its ageing hydro-electric and diesel power plants in various parts of Mindanao to prevent further degradation of its facilities, it added.
The NGCP said the NPC has downgraded the capacity of its Agus 1 hydroelectric power plant to 35 MW from its original 80 MW, Agus 2 to 80 MW from 180 MW, Agus 4 to 100 MW from 158 MW, Agus 5 to 30 MW from 55 MW, Agus 6 to 130 MW from 200 MW, Agus 7 to 25 MW from 54 MW, Pulangi 4 to 200 MW from 255 MW, and the Zamboanga City-based Western Mindanao Power Corp. diesel plants to 90 MW from 100 MW.
The Department of Energy had previously warned of a severe electricity supply situation in Mindanao starting next year when the summer season starts and drains water reserves in Mindanao’s hydro-electric power plant facilities.
Several private companies have started new power plant projects to offset the expected power supply shortage, among them Aboitiz Power Corporation which is proposing a 300-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Davao and the Alcantara Group which is building a 200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Sarangani province and a 100-megawatt power plant in San Ramon district in Zamboanga City.