Business World Online
Posted on July 19, 2014 08:28:27 AM
Even after the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) restored power in most of its franchise area on Friday, customers were not spared from rolloing brownouts of up to five hours due to a deficiency in the power supply.
The distribution utility implemented manual load dropping (MLD) on Friday morning, with parts of Manila, Quezon City, Bulacan, Cavite, Las Piñas, Batangas, Rizal and Laguna identified as affected areas.
“These rotating brownouts, which are tentatively scheduled until midnight, will affect practically all other areas within the Meralco franchise,” the firm said in a statement.
Alfredo S. Panlilio, Meralco senior vice-president, said the problem was die to an insufficient supply from power generators.
“The expected generation supply hasn’t fully come in. We continue to coordinate with the DoE (Department of Energy) and NGCP (National Grid Corporation of the Philippines),” he said in a text message.
The latest data from the NGCP showed that the Luzon grid was under a red alert on Friday afternoon as the demand of 5,813-megawatts (MW) outstripped the available capacity of 4,745-MW.
Meralco started implementing three-hour rotating brownouts on Thursday since power plants had yet to go online in the aftermath of typhoon Glenda (international name: Rammasun).
Among the affected major power plants were the Ilijan, San Lorenzo and Sta. Rita natural gas plants and Calaca coal plant in Batangas, and the Quezon and Pagbilao coal plants in Quezon.
Early Friday morning, the 647-MW Sual coal-fired power plant in Pangasinan went off line, with cause of the sudden tripping yet to be determined.
The power situation is expected to improve as power plants start to come on stream. The 1,200-MW Ilijan plant went online early Friday, said Meralco.
The first 300-MW unit of the Calaca plant also returned to service on Friday, according to its owner Semirara Mining Corp., which expects the second 300-MW unit to be synchronized to the grid by Monday.
Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho L. Petilla said the Quezon power plant was expected to go online Friday, but the Pagbilao plant could not deliver power to the grid since facilities within the plant site were still out.
“Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo will kick-in 250 MW anytime now but will gradually increase to 1,250 MW over the weekend,” said Mr. Petilla in a text message.
While there were concerns that the rotating outages may persist over the weekend, Meralco’s Mr. Panlilio said “it depends on the ramp up of supply.”
“If Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo are back [as scheduled], maybe wala na (there will be no more),” he added since demand on weekends is historically low.
The NGCP’s outlook showed that the Luzon grid’s peak demand on Saturday was expected to hit 6,200 MW but a 6,742 MW supply would be sufficient with 542 MW in reserves.
For Sunday, peak demand was seen to reach 5,630 MW but supply would be sufficient at 6,674 MW with 1,044 MW in reserves.
As restoration activities within its franchise area continue, Meralco expressed confidence that it would have nearly 100% of its damaged facilities restored by Friday night.
“[N]ot withstanding the ongoing MLD, already around 75% of its customers have been energized [as of Friday afternoon],” Meralco said in its statement.
“The [distribution utility] expects to be able to restore close to 96% of its affected facilities today (Friday),” it said.
It added that there might be isolated cases where some households would still experience browouts but that its personnel are continuously working on the facilities to address the problem. -- Claire-Ann Marie C. Feliciano source
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