Rotating outages to hit south-central Mindanao

Business World Online

Posted on January 04, 2012 11:25:10 PM

GENERAL SANTOS -- With the power situation in Mindanao on “red alert” status, a rotating power interruption is expected to hit this city and neighboring provinces as the projected supply deficiency continued to worsen on Wednesday.

Joy Celeste Alora, information officer of the South Cotabato Electric Cooperative II (Socoteco II), said the Mindanao grid has insufficient supply due to the reduced generation capacity of the National Power Corp. (Napocor). The state power firm operates hydropower plants that provide more than half of the island’s supply of electricity.

“Socoteco II will implement rotating brownouts lasting for 45 minutes to an hour in its franchise area,” Ms. Alora said in a radio interview. “Unless there will be new power producers, supply won’t become stable. Our power supply is now in a precarious situation because of ageing power plants,” she added.

Socoteco II serves this city, the whole of Sarangani province (seven towns) and Polomolok and Tupi in South Cotabato, or Socsargen. The power generation deficiency in Mindanao has prompted the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) to resort to load curtailment during the past few days.

Based on the NGCP outlook as of 6 a.m. Wednesday, the island’s system capacity stood at 1,192 megawatts (MW). The projected peak load was pegged at 1,269 MW, hence a deficiency of 77 MW. The deficiency merits putting Mindanao’s power system condition under red alert status.

Red alert refers to the system condition when the contingency reserve is zero or a generation deficiency exists, NGCP explained in an earlier statement.

Mindanao was placed last November under “yellow alert,” a system condition where the total of all reserves is less than 13.2% of the required capacity.

When reserves are more than sufficient to meet the requirements of the grid, the system is considered to be under normal condition. The system alert, and the corresponding power curtailment, if any, is lifted once demand recedes or once there is enough available capacity coming into the grid from the power plants.

In a phone interview on Wednesday, Milfrance Q. Capulong, NGCP communications officer for Mindanao, said the generation deficiency experienced in the Southern Philippines started last Jan. 1.

She declined, however, to give details when asked for the reasons of the generation deficiency reportedly from the Napocor, saying she is not privy to such matters.

But Ms. Capulong noted that power demand in Mindanao is on a rising trend, resulting in the strain on the supply. She could not say until when the NGCP, the private operator of the country’s power transmission network, would implement the load curtailment to electric distributors across the island.

Ms. Capulong also stressed the need to put in place additional power generation facilities to serve the growing needs of the island.

To date, at least three companies -- Aboitiz Power Corp., Sarangani Energy Corp., and San Miguel Corp. -- have bared plans to put up coal power plants in different locations in Mindanao. These coal plant projects, however, have been facing resistance on concerns over human health and the environment. -- Romer S. Sarmiento