by Myrna Velasco August
19, 2016
The Energy Regulatory
Commission (ERC) is re-validating submitted reports of power plants on their
reported ‘boiler tube leak incidents’ and other technical glitches that partly
caused rotating brownouts in Luzon in the past two weeks.
In a hearing by the
Senate committee on energy, ERC Chairman Jose Vicente B. Salazar stipulated
that they have been pursuing technical re-validation process on the
Bacon-Manito 1 geothermal plant; Calaca unit 2 coal-fired plant; GNPower unit 1
coal plant; Limay thermal facility; Makiling-Banahaw geothermal plant; Malaya
unit 2 thermal facility; Pagbilao unit 2; South Luzon Thermal Energy
Corporation unit 2 coal plant; and the unit 2 of Sual coal-fired power plant.
He said some plants
have not immediately submitted ‘reports on their technical malfunctions’ within
the required timeframe of 48 hours. Nevertheless, after a second reminder from
the ERC, all of them finally complied.
Salazar said the
extended work of the Commission is to counter-check the veracity of the reasons
provided by the generation companies as to why their power plants had been
snagged with forced outages.
The ERC chair noted
that capacity loss from plants’ forced outages during the critical stretch of
July 26 to August 5 had been reckoned at 2,299.8 megawatts.
Yellow alert conditions
in the grid sparked off as early as July 19, but actual power interruptions
only happened on two instances – last July 30 (Saturday) and that fateful
Friday of August 5.
Beyond physical
evaluation of the technical drawbacks at power plants, the industry regulator
is also thrown into that more tricky probe if there have been ‘collusive acts’
by the generation companies (GenCos) during those tight supply conditions.
Salazar acknowledged
that there have been spikes in spot prices during those ‘yellow’ and ‘red
alert’ days in the power system, but it will take deeper scrutiny and analysis
if some actions of the industry players had been ‘contrived’.
Some quarters have been
pointing out the parallelism of the July-August 2016 events to the simultaneous
maintenance shutdowns and forced outages of power plants that also unnerved the
industry in 2013.
At that time though,
public agitation was more on the P4.00 to P5.00 per kilowatt hour (kWh) drastic
hikes in electricity rates being an outcome then of tight supply conditions in
the grid.
For this year, the
extent of cost impacts may not be of the same magnitude because of the
secondary price cap mechanism instituted in the Wholesale Electricity Spot
Market (WESM) following the disastrous industry events of 2013.
The ERC though is still
setting its sights on probability of abuses that may have been committed by
participants in the market, primarily on those instances of deficient grid
supply.
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