DoE sees adequate summer power supply

February 19, 2018 | 8:23 pm By Victor V. Saulon, Sub-Editor

http://bworldonline.com/doe-sees-adequate-summer-power-supply/

POWER SUPPLY will be adequate during the dry months when demand spikes as long as three new power plants will come online as scheduled and assuming no forced outages.

Distribution utilities will also be given more specific guidelines on their power procurement in line with the recent issuance of a circular on competitive selection process (CSP), which requires price challengers to all supply contracts.

These are the among the assurances given by the Department of Energy (DoE) to consumers in a briefing at its headquarters in Taguig City on Monday.

“On the summer months, as projected, we will not have any problem as long as the new power plants will come in and run,” said Redentor E. Delola, DoE assistant secretary.

“And we still have Malaya,” he added, referring to the 650-megawatt (MW) thermal plant in Rizal province that is run when needed to supplement power reserves.

Mr. Delola said the DoE is expecting the 150-MW second unit of SMC Consolidated Power Corp.’s power plant in Limay, Bataan to be online in the second quarter, followed by Pagbilao Energy Corp.’s 420-MW plant in Quezon.

In the Visayas, he said the department expects Therma Visayas, Inc.’s 300-MW power plant to be running by the dry season. The three are coal-fired power facilities.

“In Mindanao, we really don’t have a problem,” Mr. Delola said.

He said based on the DoE’s projection for the summer months, demand in Luzon could peak at 10,500 MW from the second to third week of May.

“But we have enough reserves… [at] 1,500 MW,” he said.

DoE’s projection mirrors that of National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), which estimated power demand in Luzon to peak this year at 10,561 MW, up 5.04% year on year when the main island breached for the first time the 10,000-MW mark.

Luzon is the biggest power user with its peak demand more than five times that of the Visayas and Mindanao.

Grid operator NGCP also said it is adequately covered for its regulating reserve, which is tapped during small variations in normal operations, at 4% of peak demand. It also expects the contingency reserve requirement to be adequate in responding to any reduction in supply when the largest power generating unit online — the 647-MW coal-fired power plant in Sual, Pangasinan — fails to deliver.

“Same as other times during the year, what we are avoiding is forced outage. It won’t lead to outages but we might have a yellow alert,” Mr. Delola said.

NGCP issues a “yellow alert” notice when the total of all reserves is less than the capacity of the largest plant online, which for the Luzon grid, is 647 MW. It issues a “red alert” notice when the contingency reserve is zero or a generation deficiency exists.

Separately, Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian has given his assurance to the public that no “massive” brownouts will take place during the dry season after the Court of Appeals issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the suspension of the four commissioners of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

“It’s a blessing that the four commissioners have been seated, at least for the next 60 days, to resolve pending cases, and the Court of Appeals took note of the importance of the power industry because all of us need electricity,” he said.

In December, the Office of the Ombudsman served a one-year suspension on four ERC commissioners for not implementing the CSP as originally scheduled, unduly favoring some distribution utilities.

Mr. Delola also said the DoE would issue this week an advisory on whether those with a pending CSP are covered by the recently issued rules.

The guidelines will include a provision that will allow consumer groups to be part of the CSP as observers, along with three representatives from the distribution utility, he added.