By Lenie Lectura - May 6, 2019
THE Manila Electric Co. (Meralco),
Millennium Energy Inc. (MEI) and Therma Mobile Inc. (TMO) are asking regulators
to approve their applications for emergency power-supply agreements (PSAs) to
avert rotational power outage.
An approval from the Energy
Regulatory Commission (ERC) will help solve the current emergency situation,
they said.
“It must be emphasized that the
timely and immediate implementation of the 2019 PSA is of paramount importance
in order to avert manual load dropping [MLD] or power interruptions and ensure
that power is continuous and reliable during the critical period of the May
elections up to June,” they said in their respective applications filed before
the ERC dated April 17.
Based on a forecast by the National
Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), there would be low voltage issues during
the critical period of the May elections up to June this year in the Luzon grid
each time peak demand exceeds 11,200 megawatts (MW).
During this period, several
NGCP-Meralco delivery-point substations will be affected, which could trigger
MLD.
Meralco said this is not a supply
adequacy issue, but an ancillary service problem caused mainly by an
insufficient supply to load center. One of the identified remedial measures is
to ensure that the embedded generators in the area, which includes the power
plant, is operational, available and dispatched.
As such, Meralco will facilitate the
dispatch of the plant by executing an emergency PSA with TMO for April 26,
2019, to April 2020, in order to mitigate low-voltage situations forecasted by
NGCP.
This one-year term of PSA could be
shortened upon execution of an ancillary procurement agreement between TMO and
NGCP.
Meralco and TMO, meanwhile, executed
an interim PSA for the purchase of 70 MW from MEI’s 100-MW gas-turbine plant in
Navotas. The IPSA will run from April 26 to June 25, 2019.
The implementation of the IPSA and
PSA is dependent on ERC’s approval.
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