Manila Standard Today
By Alena Mae S. Flores, Jerrylyn B. Damaso | Jul. 13, 2014 at 12:01am
At least half-a-million consumers suffered rotating outages lasting up to three hours on Saturday in 24 cities and towns mostly in Metro Manila and parts of Quezon, Laguna, Cavite and Bulacan, officials said.
Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla said the power situation may return to normal today (Sunday) but a labor group called for the declaration of national emergency and described the Energy department’s “red alert” as the start of constant power failures nationwide.
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines criticized Petilla for his alleged failure to resolve the power crisis and prevent spurts in electricity rates.
Meralco said it scheduled a maintenance shutdown of Ilijan power plant but several other plants also had to be closed for emergency repairs, thus leading to a severe supply shortage.
“Rotating power interruptions lasting up to three hours started to be implemented in portions of Meralco franchise area due to supply deficiency brought about by unavailability of several power plants including the 1,200 megawatt Ilijan plant which had to undergo Pipeline Inspection Gauge activities,” Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldariagga said.
The brownouts affected 500,000 customers in Meralco’s franchise areas such as Manila, Quezon City, Marikina, Muntinlupa, Pasay, Navotas, Makati, Parañaque, Las Piñas, Mandaluyong, San Juan, Tagaytay, Taytay, Pasig, Marikina , Antipolo, Pateros and Taguig along with parts of Rizal, Cavite, Batangas, Quezon and Marilao town in Bulacan.
Petilla said that the 300 MW capacity from the Calaca coal plant in Batangas owned by the Consunji Group is now back online but 300 MW from the Masinloc coal plant of AES Corp. in Zambales and 300 MW from GN Power Ltd.’s coal plant in Bataan remained offline.
Unit 1 of the Masinloc Power Plant shutdown on July 10 due to an operational problem. The plant is expected to come online tomorrow or Monday.
The 1,200 MW Ilijan natural gas plant went offline on Saturday because of the maintenance and inspection work on its pipelines.
Petilla said the Ilijan plant, however, is expected to slowly come online on Sunday.
Petilla said Meralco’s interruptible load program (ILP) where large power users are asked to deload from the grid to lessen demand helped to ease the power situation.
“ILP was in place that’s why there was less brownout in Meralco’s franchise area than in the rest of Luzon,” he said.
He said some 40 MW went offline at a time under the ILP.
Zaldarriaga said the brownout started around 10:27 a.m. Saturday which lasted until 4 p.m. then resumed from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
National Grid Corporation of the Philippines on Friday said the deficiency for the Luzon grid was estimated at around 715 MW (536 MW for Meralco) at noon peak Saturday, 620 MW (465 MW for Meralco) at afternoon peak and 220 MW (165 MW for Meralco) at evening peak.
In proposing a national emergency, TUCP said it was seeking to put an end to the country being a victim of the vicious cycle.
“Our ship-of-state is sailing full speed ahead, in a collision course with the twin -peak iceberg of lack of power and MERALCO’s never-ending price increases. The DOE is placing our economic take-off at risk and is setting the stage for an impending economic meltdown,” TUCP Executive Director Luis Corral.
“The TUCP requests that the DOE Secretary to call a spade a spade and advice President Aquino that there is now an emergency in the power sector, requiring a multi-agency response with clear directions from the President, “said Corral.
TUCP sought the creation of a multi-agency group to address the power crisis. source
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