Sporadic power outages on elections

Manila Bulletin
By Myrna M. Velasco
Published May 14, 2013

Despite all sorts of contingency measures enforced by the Department of Energy (DoE), sporadic power outages still occurred during yesterday’s voting period.
But the energy department similarly reported that “power was restored right away thereby posing no threat” to credible results of the election.
Among distribution utilities, including that of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco), the government asked them to be “on heightened alert to respond immediately should there be report of power interruptions in polling precincts and canvassing centers.”
Special attention was given to Mindanao which has been suffering from lingering brownouts for many years now. The assurance of the government had been for power supply to be sufficient and reliable for the grid, at least on elections day.
The energy department went to the extent of issuing a circular asking oil companies to switch on their generator sets, instead of drawing power supply from the grid. Power-intensive industries were also requested to resort to load curtailment until today (May 14) at 12 noon.
Given the declaration of holiday on Monday’s polling day, it was shown that peak demand in Luzon grid plummeted to 6,366 megawatts compared to the 8,000MW plus level last week. Available capacity in the grid was at 9,188MW, hence, setting off a very comfortable level of capacity reserve.
According to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the supply in Luzon was “boosted with the commercial operation of the 600MW GNPower coal-fired facility in Mariveles, Bataan. Its contribution to grid supply since Saturday had been averaging 490MW, the system operator added.
For Visayas, peak demand forecast was at 1,302MW vis-à-vis available capacity at 1,789MW. The grid effectively had a hefty reserve of 487MW.   source