Steag Power to conduct preventive maintenance in Mindanao coal plant

by Lenie Lectura - March 2, 2016
http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/steag-power-to-conduct-preventive-maintenance-in-mindanao-coal-plant/

STEAG State Power Inc. (SPI) said on Wednesday it would conduct this week another preventive maintenance involving its coal-power generating unit 1 in Mindanao.

It successfully carried out on February 6 and 7 its first preventive-maintenance schedule for the year involving its power-generating unit 2.

Unit 1, meanwhile, is scheduled for a two-day planned preventive maintenance on March 5 and 6.

SPI President Dr. Bodo Goerlich said the company has scheduled the initial preventive-maintenance activities during the first quarter of 2016 to ensure that its power plant is optimally available during summer.

During this period, electricity demand in Mindanao is expected to be at its peak, while power production is expected to be low due to water-supply constraints of the island’s hydroelectric-power plants.

“We carry out the necessary preventive-maintenance activities ahead of the summer season to ensure optimum availability of our capacity, especially during the critical summer months, when demand is at its peak while supply is historically at its low,” Dr. Goerlich said.

SPI owns and operates Mindanao’s first coal-fired power plant located at the Phividec Industrial Estate in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental. The power plant has two identical power-generating units with a capacity of 105 MW each, or a total combined net-generating output of 210 MW.

SPI Power Plant Manager Dr. Carsten Evers said the timing of the preventive-maintenance activities is critically important, citing volatility in the power-supply condition of the grid.

Evers also said regular-maintenance activities are necessary for the long-term reliability of power stations. He said that in SPI, preventive-maintenance activities requiring relatively more days to complete are scheduled during the third quarter of the year, when the power-supply condition in Mindanao is expectedly more stable.

Since the start of its operation in November 2006, SPI’s power plant has delivered more than 12 billion kilowatt hours of power to the Mindanao grid and has sustained a high availability rating of 90 percent. Through the years, the power plant posted an average unplanned outage rate of 2.5 percent which is way below its annual allowable unplanned-rate allowance of 6.6 percent.



SPI is principally owned by a leading German power producer STEAG GmbH, with local partners Aboitiz Power and La Filipina Uygongco Corp.